Umberto Lenzi, for my money, is the king of the Polizi films and while Free Hand for a Tough Cop might not be the best known of his genre films, or as good as the likes of The Cynic, The Rat and the Fist or Almost Human, is still a damn fine piece of cinema and is sure to please anyone with a mind to see it. This film is different from the other Polizi films I've seen from Lenzi as the urban landscape that usually makes up the setting for this sort of film has been thrown out in favour of a more rural one. This sets the film apart from most of the rest genre, and it also gives it a feel that borders on Spaghetti western, which is nice. The plot is well worked and features a police officer who teams up with a dirty criminal known to friends and otherwise as 'Garbage Can'. They've been put together to find a girl being held for ransom by vicious gangster Brescianelli. They face a race against time as the girl has kidney problems, and there's also a secondary objective, which takes the form of taking down the gangster who is hoping to gain ransom from holding her.
Free Hand for a Tough Cop benefits from a great musical score, which is amazingly catchy and also provides a nice backdrop for the movie. The film features all the shootouts and car chases that you would expect from this sort of film, and there's also a fair share of humour, which actually bodes quite well with the characters and plot line. Lenzi's direction is solid as always, and he pulls great performances out of his esteemed cast. The lead role, as you would expect, goes to Thomas Milian, who delivers a different sort of performance to the ones seen in most of Lenzi's crime films. He gets great backup from Claudio Cassinelli and Henry Silva, as well as a number of other memorable Italian crime flick faces. The characters are actually very well designed considering what you would expect from this sort of film, and that is another aspect that makes Free Hand for a Tough Cop better than your average Polizi flick. The conclusion to the story isn't difficult to guess, but Lenzi provides a nice bit of humour at the end that leaves the audience with a nice taste in their mouth.
