A cop is consumed with the desire to get revenge on the crook who shot his wife to death during a robbery. The crook in question is Marseilles who is trying to assemble funds for his own retirement.

There's trouble in Frankie Diomede's criminal empire in Genoa. A French gangster has moved into Frankie's territory, so Frankie flies home to take care of business. He promptly has himself arrested so that he'll have the perfect alibi when his top local associate dies, but then Frankie's life gets complicated: his enemies have enough juice to keep him in prison for awhile, his associates and allies are killed one at a time, and attempts on his life start. Help comes from an unlikely source: Tony Breda, a wannabe wiseguy who's a Milanese raised in Hoboken. Tony designs a plan to spring Frankie from jail, and then all roads lead to Marseilles. Is Tony a future Mafia don?

Carlo Antonelli, an engineer from Genoa, gets mugged and decides to take justice into his own hands. At first the muggers seem to get the upper hand, but then he's helped by Tommy, a young robber who takes his side.

When a shipment of heroin disappears between Italy and New York, a small-time pimp in Milan is framed for the theft. Two professional hitmen are dispatched from New York to find him, but the real thieves want to get rid of him before the New York killers get to him to eliminate any chance of them finding out he's the wrong man. When the pimp's wife and daughter are murdered in the course of the "manhunt", he swears revenge on everyone who had anything to do with it.

Cigarette smugglers in Naples run into problems with cocaine operations being set up by a rival smuggler. Full of violence, including a women's face being burned off with a blow torch and a graphic rape scene.

Guilio Sacchi, an underworld crime boss, is about to rise above the rank of Mafia hitman to the most savage killer in Milan. He kidnaps the daughter of a wealthy businessman, planning to live a life of luxury with the ransom he collects. In the course of obtaining the money, Guilio finds it necessary to mercilessly slaughter anyone who gets in his way, and the city's death toll increases by the minute. Walter Grandi is a frustrated police chief who's seen too many innocent people die by Guilio's hands. Determined to exterminate Guilio and his men, Grandi attempts to convict the vicious criminal only to realize he can never obtain the necessary proof. Finally, Grandi must transgress the rules of his profession to stop Sacchi's ruthless reign of terror.

1974 Italian film directed by Umberto Lenzi

Just out of prison, ex-con Ugo Piazza meets his former employer, a psychopathic gangster Rocco who enjoys sick violence and torture. Both the gangsters and the police believe Ugo has hidden $300,000 that should have gone to an American drug syndicate boss.

An agent's plot to overthrow an African nation is jeopardized by his friend's interference in the country's politics.

Nico Palmieri is a police inspector who battles a criminal gang terrorising a sleepy Italian town, extorting cash from the local merchants. With the threat of violence, no one dares to act, except for a restaurant owner who is forced by Palmieri to tell the truth. As a result, the owner's young daughter is raped, and the violence continues. Discovering that the gang is associated with drug dealers, Palmieri is forbidden to continue investigating his case by his superior - so he takes matters into his own hands. Palmieri recruits a couple of men who have become victims of the gang and sets out for a bloody revenge.

An Italian official's wife is kidnapped, and the kidnappers demand that a notorious prisoner be released in order for the man to get his wife back. He gets the man released--but then kidnaps him himself, in order to ensure that the man's colleagues don't kill his wife. Enraged, the gang sets out to free their compatriot and kill the man who took him.

1973 poliziottesco film directed by Sergio Sollima

Fred and Tony are members of an elite 'special squad' of police in Rome, Italy, who are licenced-to-kill, undercover cops who thrive on living dangerously.

whitneyabi

1970s Italian crime/action films. Born out of the French gangster film resurgence of the late 1960s-1970s, as well as the cultural turmoil in Italy at the time. Violence, vigilantism, corruption, “greatness of the working class protagonist over the corrupt bureaucracy”

Poliziotteschi Films

movie

Niko Aiello

I guess I’m more of an arthouse snob than I thought

1979 American war film directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Best of All Time

1987 American science fiction parody movie directed by Mel Brooks

Sci-Fi and/or Horror 

2014 film directed by John Michael McDonagh

Watchlist 2.0

Books to Read

Fellini = fantasy/baroque, Pasolini = sexuality, Rossellini = war, Visconti = decadence/decline of nobility

Italian Neorealism

Post-Colonialism, nostalgia, modernity and youth culture, and the ultimate cultural identity of Hong Kong

Hong Kong New Wave

German films, 1962 - 1982, born out of the Oberhausen Manifesto. Disillusionment with post-War Germany, rejection of mainstream German cinema and art, socially critical. Would go on to influence Italian Neorealism, Nouvelle Vague, and British New Wave

1979 film directed by Volker Schlöndorff

Neuer Deutscher Film

Italian Comedies from the 1950s to 1970s: lots of satire, lots of "socially taboo" subjects, usually to the background of the working class with some sprinkles of social criticism

Commedia all'italiana

All the references and recommendations from the Director’s Commentary of Hot Fuzz, as well as those from their conversation on the Empire Film Podcast