Roma, l'altra faccia della violenza

In Rome, as the title suggests, a spate of home invasions/robberies are taking place, carried out by some hard-arse criminals. Following the most recent robbery, these fellows are spotted and chased by the plod, including young cop Vanni (Massimo Vanni), who shortly receives a bullet to the chest. Luckily he had a picture of his wife and kid with him so his boss Marcel Bofuzzi can stare at it and vow revenge.

Meanwhile, rich guy Anthony Steffen has just bought his daughter an eighteenth birthday watch but isn't doing so well bonding with his son Giorgio, who has moved out and hates his dad for some reason. Once we've established all that, it's time for Steffen's daughter to get gunned down during a party by a group of masked robbers. Steffen vows revenge, but is sceptical of the police as they seem to be heading down the wrong road when it comes to the culprits.

Basically, there's two gangs of robbers: Your usual run-of-the-mill rough crowd and a gang of spoilt upstart kids who are killing for kicks. It's the latter Steffen tries his hardest to bring down, but these smug b'stards have rich fathers with lawyers out to cover everything up while they rape, beat, and shoot their way through Rome. Steffen of course becomes a gun-toting vigilante (eventually), but things don't work out as straightfoward as that, eh?

The best bit for me and what gave me an idea that director Girolami wasn't that bothered about the final product was when somehow Massimo Vanno was magically resurrected to take part in an action sequence set at a robbery at a train station. Either they filmed that as the intro to the film and decided to go with the first home robbery, or they just stuck that in there and hoped no one would notice. Or maybe they were trying to say that Massimo Vanni is Jesus. Which he is.

Add to that all the camera shadows and a car being driven by an old man with a moustache when it should be a young fella and you've still got a decent crime film. Anthony Steffen even puts in a good turn!