D:
Steno [Stefano Vanzina]. P: Dieter Geissler, Peter Geissler, Roberto
Infascelli. W: Steno, Lucio De Caro. Ph: Riccardo Pallottini. M: Stelvio
Cipriani. St: Enrico Maria Salerno (Commissioner Bertone), Mariangela Melato
(Sandra), Mario Adorf (District Attorney Ricciuti), Franco Frabrizi (Francesco
Bettarini), Cyril Cusack (former Superintendent Stolfi)
“Summary justice: sign of the times”
Snide
verbal snipes from swaggering hoodlum Bettarini (“What kind o’ dough you
pulling in?”) are characteristic of the cavalier attitude that world-weary police
commissioner Bertone and his colleagues face on the street. Bettarini has won
an official pardon. It seems typical of a justice system that is routinely stacked
in favour of violent criminals, and the situation spawns a vigilante force of
ruthless killers.[ii]
The angry premise is unusual for Steno, a prolific film-maker renowned for
bawdy comedies. With debates about crime and punishment, a driving score by
Cipriani, well-drawn characters and scuzzy violence, Execution Squad is often cited as the first poliziotteschi. This is a matter for debate, but it was undoubtedly
in the vanguard.
After
fatally shooting two people during a robbery, Michele (JΓΌrgen Drews) carjacks teenager Anna Maria (Laura Belli) to facilitate
his getaway, holding her hostage in a boatyard. With crime figures in Rome increasing,
Bertone faces endless press conferences in which he must justify police methods
criticised as either too liberal or too heavy-handed. When Mario, a petty
purse-snatcher, is plucked from the street and shot dead by a gang of thuggish
gunmen, their technique reminds Bertone of executions from Italy’s fascist past.
It soon becomes apparent that it is not just the police who are intent on
clearing the streets. Bertone’s situation is made more problematic when he is
obliged to protect Michele from these self-appointed ‘cleaners’.
Dialogue
between Bertone and the journalists, who burst into police headquarters after
every major criminal is apprehended or crime committed, lays the foundation for
the theme of Steno’s thriller. This is expanded during his intimate scenes with
Sandra, a reporter with whom he is having a fling. Bertone is in an invidious
position – “The underworld buggers us and the press rams it in deeper.” He inhabits
the shaky political middle ground: he is against the kind of summary justice exacted
by later Italian screen cops – viz. Live
Like a Cop, Die Like a Man or most Maurizio
Merli vehicles – but also knows that a gentle touch won’t make the streets
safer.
Retro
comic relief is provided when Bertone invites the baying journos on a bus trip around
Rome’s less salubrious quarters to see how police time is expended trying to
protect prostitutes from pimps and the public. Disdain for male prostitutes
(read: homosexuality in general) spills out in the script: “Our young friend
here earns his living with the sweat of his ass.” It’s an odd scene, a muddied
mix of reactionary prejudice and social documentary.
Steno’s
direction does not equal that of the genre masters, Di Leo, Massi or Lenzi; there’s
little to excite visually. He favoured a generally blunt approach for his
inflammable material. The story picks up pace during the second act. Butt-ugly brutes
race round the more industrial wastelands of the city in cramped Fiats, finding
and eliminating their victims. Mario’s death, tied to a mooring hoop by the
Tiber and executed at gunpoint, is grotty and shocking, while Bettarini’s
cockiness is cut short when the ‘cleaners’ murder him at an electrical power
plant. Soon, union leaders and kerb crawlers are added to the hit list, and
Bertone starts to suspect that the clean-up campaign is less about vigilantism than
it is about political strategy.
The
film’s undeniable power is anchored to the forceful performance of Salerno as
the cop determined to operate within the boundaries of the law. Adorf, sans moustache, is cast against type as
the DA equally determined to keep the cops in line. A noxious cameo by Cyril
Cusack – in one of his many Euro crime features – as a former police superior
who offers Bertone his seasoned point of view deepens the intrigue and expands
the suspect list.
As
he slowly peels away the layers of the investigation to reveal what is behind
the killings, Bertone becomes as much a noir protagonist as a common Eurocrime policeman.
The suspicion that there are insidious powers at work, determined to overthrow
the liberal consensus for their own needs, is not unusual for politically
charged dramas of this stripe. However, as Execution
Squad reaches a conclusion that is bleak even by the cynical standards of
the Italian police procedural, the sense of inescapability from the
machinations of dark political forces has rarely been so effectively rendered.
Clark Hodgkiss
[i]
The Italian title translates roughly as the bitterly ironic From the Police with Thanks.
[ii]
This premise was reproduced – probably coincidentally - in the Dirty Harry sequel,
Magnum Force, while the notion of citizens taking the law into their hands
became a staple of Italian crime pictures – The
Big Racket, Violent Rome etc.
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