Dirty Weekend

While not as explosive as the other gutsier Oliver Reed-starring Poliziotteschi classic 'Revolver', the subtleties of the politically nuanced screenplay, and the preternatural charisma of Marcello Mastroianni make maestro Dino Risi's darkly sardonic, TV-Media satirizing road movie 'Dirty Weekend' a far more intellectually stimulating work. Wherein the gregarious bourgeois businessman Mastroianni takes his delectably nubile girlfriend away for a wicked weekend of some riotously unbound rumpy pumpy, when their adulterous tryst is crudely interrupted by a majestically brooding Ollie Reed, and his two querulous partners in crime, and the exciting, frequently comedic Euro-crime thriller shifts into an exhilaratingly higher gear, as the satisfyingly cerebral film becomes a rather more playful Poliziotteschi, whereupon the kidnapping rapidly escalates into a rumbustious, ceaselessly entertaining media-fuelled circus! 'Dirty Weekend' is a surprisingly contemplative thriller, considerably less reliant on cliché than many of its more bellicose brethren, thereby allowing for some genuine sympathy to develop for the diverse character's increasingly dire predicament, a dynamic pointedly absent in much genre cinema, and maestro Carlo Rustichelli's sprightly score is another highlight!