SHADOWS UNSEEN is an intriguing little Italian polizia movie with a conspiracy feel to it. Once again the hero is the 'one good cop' who must go up against his unwilling superiors to hunt for the murderer of a journalist taken into the countryside and shot in the head. A tip-off leads them to a suspect who confesses to the killing, but the cop isn't convinced and continues to dig.This film is pretty interesting and entertaining, even if it is slow paced. There's just one action scene, a fantastic car chase, which takes place right at the end of the movie, so action lovers should look elsewhere. However, the viewer is awarded with strong acting from an ensemble cast and a gritty shooting style which makes this feel like a documentary at times. It takes a long time for protagonist Frederick Stafford to discover the truth, but the journey there is a good one full of the usual style and grit.

On one night, a journalist named Enrico Galiardin was attacked and killed by not a few people. And then, Inspector Luca Micheli begins to investigate, and somehow finds a suspect named Delogo. But, though the suspect himself confesses that he murdered Galiardin, Micheli doesn't and can't believe he did by himself. So he keeps investigating under the troublesome circumstances that both some crime organisation and the police itself force him closing the case with the only one suspect... Some apparently informative literatures seem to innocently presuppose this Italian film is a Giallo (and, strangely enough, their treatments seem to be all too brief), I don't and can't think so. On the contrary, I think this is nothing but a political drama with an unusually serious police officer, which excludes so-called Giallish elements. And, though this film betrays me exclusively because it is not a Gallio at all, I believe this is a simply great film. Concretely, the strength of this film lies mainly in two and independent powerfulness; its passionately and almost fanatically serious leading character, Inspector Luca Micheli, whom Frederick Stafford superbly plays, (indeed, this male character is too serious to be realistic and therefore has not only unacceptably official but also tragically marital/familial dysfunctions, and at the same time he is so powerful that does not perform a series of actions one after another but at one stoke brings about a series of events one after another), and Riz Ortolani's highly impressive music (his music is, of course, not event(s) and therefore do not straightforwardly enter into the casual relations, but is so powerful that can bring about event(s).) And furthermore, the director, Camillo Bazzaoni, has trustworthy talent for making each scene impressive. Especially, I am unexpectedly and almost astonishedly impressed by the aesthetic violentness of the last scene, which is adequately heightened and enriched by Ortolani's music. And here, as one of the Giallo-lovers, I want to add that the aesthetics of the last scene of this film has some interesting similarity to that of Dario Argento's FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET. In conclusion, I can say this film is a great one which is recommendable to the general Italian-film-lovers rather than to the Giallo-lovers.