High Crime (1973)

Absolutely Fantastic

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

A Brilliant Conflict

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Enzo G. Castellari's first police procedural crime thriller "High Crime" a.k.a. "La polizia incrimina la legge assolve" (1973) qualifies as violent, tragic, but memorable. The auto chases are fast and furious. The villains are thoroughgoing dastards who are prepared to kill anybody, including children. They run down our hero's daughter without a qualm in one scene. Not only do they smash into her, but they also drive over her body. Of course, obvious dummies were used in this scene as well as in the explosion scenes, but the violence is emphatic. This is like dummies pitched off a building that hit the street several floors below. A policeman on foot fires into a car barreling toward him and the criminals smash into his body. Again, the filmmakers use a dummy, but everything is done with a visceral sense of urgency that makes it exciting if not horrific. Castellari and company stage some beautiful fireball explosions that hold your attention. Spaghetti western star Franco Nero plays the energetic but frustrated Italian Vice-Commissioner Belli who will never be the same after this war with the mob. "High Crime" comes with a double-digit body count, and the significant shootings are presented in slow-motion. A high-ranking police official takes three bullets in his body when his back is turned to a heavy. You'll hate the bad guys and savor their deaths by fade-out. Although this 100-minute melodrama features a happy ending, the toll that Belli's crusade against crime takes leaves a bitter after-taste. One anonymous commentator at a download site has written that "High Crime" "was largely responsible for setting off the entire Italian crime film movement of the 70's.""High Crime" opens with our heroic police officer arresting an elusive Lebanese drug dealer in Genoa after a careening auto chase through the city. Unfortunately, Belli doesn't keep the Lebanese in custody long before the wily criminals blow up the police car transporting his prisoner. Miraculously, Belli wasn't seated in the vehicle when it blew up and killed the Lebanese and four cops, along with a young girl playing nearby in the street. Meantime, Belli's superior, Commissioner Aldo Scavino (JamesWhitmore), wants to get adequate evidence on everybody from the bottom to the top and he is prepared to exercise patience in his battle with organized crime. Assiduously, he has compiled a dossier on mafia connections, but Belli lacks Scaviono's patience. Belli is a man of action. He consults with a former crime boss, Cafiero (Fernando Rey of "The French Connection"), who spends most of his time in his rose garden. Cafiero warns our hot-headed hero that if the mob cannot put him on ice, they will go after the people that he loves. Meanwhile, the mob ambushes Scavino as he is getting into his car in an exciting shoot-out sequence that continues when a street cop opens fire on the two killers as they flee from the scene of the crime. "High Crime" is unforgettable.

Wow! This film has all that you've come to expect from a Euro Crime flick. Violent murders, long shoot-outs with machine guns, a hot-tempered police officer who loathes criminals, downright evil henchmen and much, much more. Franco Nero has lately become one of my favorite actors, and not without a reason; in this film he proves what a talent he really had. This might just be Enzo G. Castellari's best crime film. It's very nicely directed, with some very interesting camera work and the music by the De Angelis brothers is the best and most suitable score I've heard them deliver to this point. It perfectly fits in with the various situations that Nero's character finds himself in.The only copy I could get a hold of was a region 0 release from 23rd Century (?). It does not have the best audio or video quality, but it's watchable. Availiable on Ebay as "The Marseilles Connection".If you're a fan of either Nero or Castellari, or of course, both, this is a film you have to see!

....but that doesn't say much. Actually, it's a totally unexceptional crime story, but Enzo Castellari manages to uplift parts of it with his gimmicks and camera tricks. If Sergio Leone had directed a straight crime flick, the result might have been close to what Castellari achieves here. (**)

This was the first break-through success of a Poliziotti Italian crime movie and spawned several dozen imitations. Possibly the best film ever made, High Crime delivers the goods like few other movies, blending some experimental filming and editing techniques in with some good performances, solid action sequences, great music, and some pretty stunning photography by Alejandro Ulloa. Unlike a lot of other crime flicks made around the same period, this film isn't sympathetic at all to the villains. They are cold and heartless thugs who's so anything to keep themselves out of jail where they rightfully belong. This film is completely fascist and right-wing in its undertones, yet maintains an engaging level of emotional impact throughout. The scene where Franco Nero discovers his daughter dead made me almost want to cry... and Castellari expertly handles the flashbacks and knows just when to use slow motion in all the right spots.This wasn't the film which set the trend in Italian crime films (see Violent Professionals) but it was an excellent film which caused their widespread (yet short-lived) popularity. Certain elements (like the getting-in-car-gun-down) were endlessly repeated in the genre by Castellari himself as well as his father Marino Girolami, who totally ripped off the ending of this film in ROMA VIOLENTA, a much more typical film in the genre with Maurizio Merli, who although is not as good an actor as Franco Nero, is much more intense as the leading man in these sorts of films.