Frank Wolff puts in a great performance here as a world weary cop in Milan assigned to a missing person's case where a middle aged man keeps referring to his little girl, who turns out to be a six foot tall nymphomaniac with the mind of a three year old! That's pretty sick seeing as all evidence points to her being sent to work as a prostitute.
Wolff is one of these cops that isn't afraid to plant stuff on people, blackmail men who frequent hookers, or have his men slap pimps around. He's also very likable as for every bust he makes, he feels the weight of every crime that goes unpunished, so he winds down at night while playing the guitar, treating his sinusitis, and banging his wife.
During the day he and his subordinates start visiting whore houses in order to track down the missing girl which leads him to befriending hooker with a heart Herrero, who might be the key to the whole case. For a change its Herrero and Wolff's missus are the one who become sort-of friends, leading to all sorts of philosophising and what not.
Another plot thread concerns that of the missing girl's father. A man who just wanted to look after his daughter, what becomes of a man who's only reason for living is missing, and what is he going to do to those responsible, as he highly suspects that one of his neighbours is the kidnapper.
The 'identity of the kidnapper' plot I guess has this film being marked as a giallo, whereas other say it's a euro-crime film. Who gives a crap? It's a good film. Not much by way of gore, or nudity, but the ending was certainly violent enough and the film also has characters that actually display feelings for a change. Duccio Tessari also directed Tony Arzenta and the two films share that highly-stylised look, and in this film Tessari includes a lot of hand held footage, and a lot of scenes where the dialogue is drowned out by external noise.
You know what this film reminded me of? A Touch of Frost. I mean that as a good thing – Wolff does that thing Frost does where he constantly berates his subordinates ("Get a haircut").
