"Roma a mano armata" aka "Assault with a Deadly Weapon" might have been done for two reasons : 1. Pure shock value, the producers hoping to bring in more cash.and / or 2. Propaganda in favour of giving law enforcement "carte blanche" to use and abuse brute force.*** Tanzi, the main cop - described as a magnet attracting trouble midway during the movie -, just has to be somewhere for crime to happen.Exchanging his "you bore me" look for his grinding teeth "I joined the force to catch criminals" face, he jumps into action to punch and kick his new found enemies.Wait a minute... did he really say that he "joined the force to catch criminals"? That is exactly the film's problem : police officers are not working to ensure social peace, but to catch criminals.The script even uses Tanzi's wife - whom he does not really seem to care for - to (in a very poorly done manner) attack social practises giving small criminals a chance to repent and become honest law-abiding citizens.Wave after wave, evil-doers cross Tanzi's path, "proving" the cop's approach that only violence can resolve violence. Thus, the movie spirals downwards into ceaseless gunfire, knifing, raping, stealing, shooting a machine gun in a crowd for no reason at all and etcetera.Did I say that there is no real story, apart from a few of the criminals Tanzi has hard time to catch throughout the movie? Yes, police force is necessary. But a movie which tries to implant the idea that it needs to become more violent is pure propaganda. Given proper care, most people are peaceful.We need more Gandhi, and less Tanzi.

This is a dumb, but thoroughly enjoyable Italian police thriller from journey-man Italian director Umberto Lenzi. Maurizio Merli is not my favorite actor (he was kind of a cut-rate Franco Nero), but he's pretty entertaining here as an over-the-top vigilante cop who slaps around suspects, engages in dangerous high-speed chases, and has shoot-outs in busy downtown Rome. When five young punks rape a girl, he goes into their hangout BY HIMSELF and beats up ALL of them up before chasing down and eventually shooting one of them to death. Even when his superior (Arthur Kennedy) transfers him to the licenses unit, he won't stay out of the action. In one of the funnier scenes, he beats information out of a bartender, breaks into a suspect's apartment without a warrant, and chases him around the Rome rooftops (in a great cinematic scene), but after the whole thing goes awry, he blames his superiors for making him go "by the book" (if that's true I'd hate to see "the book").This movie has a great supporting cast. Besides Arthur Kennedy (who was in movies like "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie" and "Rico, the Mean Machine"), the movie features Ivan Rassimov, perhaps somewhat wasted as a low-level thug who gives his girlfriend an overdose of heroin simply because she's a "pain in the ass". The best of all though, is the great Tomas Milian as a psychotic hunchback, who starts out as a sympatheic figure, but turns out to be a frightening heavy. In one scene Meri's detective slaps him around and makes him swallow a bullet, which he later he craps out and vows to shoot the detective in the face with face with it for revenge! The real weakness of this movie is the loose plotting. There's a lot of action set pieces, but the whole thing doesn't really hold together, especially whenever Milian is not on screen. The movie also could have used more women. Merli does have a pretty girlfriend (who the villains at one point threaten to put through a car compactor), but her role is pretty perfunctory.Still this is definitely a fun movie and I would recommend it.

"Rome Armed to the Teeth" actually just confirmed something I already knew, but it was a more than welcome reminder. Umberto Lenzi was a genius (or better, IS a genius as he's still alive only no longer active for obvious reasons) and with this film he delivered another high-speed, adrenalin-rushing, mega-violent, hyper-brutal and ultra-demented Poliziottesco masterpiece! I admit I'm biased regarding the director and the genre, but this is unquestionably the most fun any movie can possibly offer. The plot is standard and the characters are stereotypical, but the action moves forward like a derailed train and something new & exciting happens approximately every one and a half minutes. And would you just look at that cast! The top of the contemporary Italian cult-industry is gathered here, including the impressively mustached Maurizio Merli, the naturally uncanny looking Ivan Rassimov and – my personal favorite – the multi versatile Tomas Milian in another formidably villainous role. Merli embodies everything the cinematic 70's copper stands for; reckless, stubborn, vengeful, disobedient towards his supervisors and, most of all, sick & tired of apprehending criminals only to see them terrorize the street again a couple of hours later. The first fifteen minutes or so perfectly illustrate how Commissioner Leo Tanzi struggles: his superiors are only concerned about the police's image in the media, his psychologist girlfriend disapproves his harsh methods and claims criminals should be helped instead of arrested and spoiled, self-confident thugs openly laugh in his face. And so Tanzi creates his very own one-man special brigade, with a little help and sympathy from his friends at the force. His main occupation is to exterminate an organized gang of armed bank robbers, led by the hunchback super criminal Il Gobbo, but in his spare time (which is often just when he drives from one crime scene to another) he makes a clean sweep of underage purse-snatchers, youthful serial rapists and drug-dealing pimps. "Rome Armed to the Teeth" guarantees 100% excitement, with plenty of wild car chases, shoot-first-ask-questions-later spectacle, and testosterone-packed dialogs. Franco Micalizzi's score is terrific, Frederico Zanni's camera-work is often dazzlingly fast and – the gifted filmmaker he was – Umberto Lenzi stuffs his film with ingenious little gimmicks and details, like the opening credits from a criminal's point of view, spotting potential heist targets. The actors are great. It is said that Maurizio Merli and Tomas Milian couldn't possibly get along in real life. This might have resulted in unpleasant days on the filming sets, but on the screen their 'vendetta' definitely assures an even more convincing good vs. bad chemistry. Magnificent film, highly recommended in case you can stomach a lot of brutal violence.

Recently I had the pleasure of watching both the Italian "Roma a Mano Armata" and the US cut "Assault with a Deadly Weapon." Lenzi's reputation as a filmmaker rests mainly on his Crime films from the mid-to-late '70s for good reason and this is an addictive and fast-paced brilliant piece of that work. Maurizio Merli is great as the quietly intense Leonardo Tanzi and deserves much more credit than the "Franco Nero wannabe" usually leveled at him. The US cut is missing the first 8 minutes of Merli's failed bust of an illegal gambling ring (at least that's what I gleaned from the lack of subtitles) and sets up his frustration of being under the law himself while desperately trying to rid the world of those who break it. Even with a different credit sequence that oddly doesn't actually credit anyone but actor Arthur Kennedy (as the director!), the US cut (available on VHS in the '80s as part of Sybil Danning's Adventure Video series with a bizarre introduction by Ms. Danning herself) is still highly highly recommended. Hopefully this will be available on DVD for more people to discover these series of films, which can easily appeal to the same fans of Italian horror and Eurocult cinema.