The Tough Ones

Maurizio Merli and Tomas Milian star in probably the most typical, yet completely enjoyable Italian crime movie by Umberto Lenzi. With a blazing soundtrack by Franco Micalizzi and some exciting camerawork by Federico Zanni, this film is fast-paced and furious although the narrative makes relatively little sense. This reminds me of THE RAIDERS OF ATLANTIS, a film Dardano Sacchetti also penned, which was completely fun and enjoyable although it didn't make any sense whatsoever.

The best scenes in this movie have to be the extended car chases. Milian hijacks an ambulence and kills all the people on board for no reason. When it crashes in a crowded flea market, Milian jumps out of the ambulence and just starts randomly firing his sub-machine gun into the crowd to create enough confusion to get away. Another great scene has a gang of upper-class teenagers led by the baby-faced Stefano Patrizi who get bored of nightclubbing and proceed to rape a girl and beat up her boyfriend in a vacant lot. Patrizi is wholely unsympathetic as he punches the boyfriend in the gut repeatedly and knees him in the face, then making weird gestures with a nearby piece of wood. Merli later pops by their nightclub and smashes Patrizi's face right through a pinball machine and then simultaneously beats the tar out of the six or so members of the gang!

This film comes fast and furious. Good performances all around by a veteran cast (with Arthur Kennedy, Ivan Rassimov, and Luciano Pigozzi along for the ride). It's not the most coherent of Lenzi's works, but it's definitely a genre classic. Where's the DVD?