YOUNG, VIOLENT, DANGEROUS(LIBERI ARMATI PERICOLOSI)
(director: Romoio Guerrieri; screenwriters: Fernando di Leo/story by Fernando di Leo/Nico Ducci/novel by Giorgio Scerbanenco; cinematographer: Erico Menczer; editor: Antonio Siciliano; music: Enrico Pieranunzi; cast: Tomas Milian (Inspector), Eleonora Giorgi (Lea), Max Delys (Luigi “Luis” Morandi), Stefano Patrizi (Mario “Blondie” Farra), Benjamin Lev (Giovanni “Joe” Etrusco), Carmelo Reale (Forger), Salvatore Billa (Forger), Diego Abatantuono (Lucio), Luciano Baraghini (Conti, assistant inspector), Peter Berling (Oberwald); Runtime: 96; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Ermanno Curti /Marcello Partini/Armando Novelli; Raro Video; 1976-Italy-in Italian with English subtitles)
“The title says it all.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
The title says it all. The pointless exploitation thriller about a trio of rich kids in Milan who go on a bloody robbery/murder spree for no apparent reason is executed soundly enough to make for passable entertainment. Director Romoio Guerrieri(“The Divorce”/”City Under Siege”/”The Final Executioner “) lets the action do the talking, which makes it work. It’s adapted from Giorgio Scerbanenco’s novel by Fernando di Leoand is written by di Leo and Nico Ducci.
Nice rich girl Lea (Eleonora Giorgi) warns the police that her weak-minded boyfriend Luis (Max Delys) is under the influence of two well-off young adults, Blondie (Stefano Patrizi) and Joe (Benjamin Lev), who are planning to stick-up a gas station with toy guns. The Milan cops set a trap, but Blondie uses a real gun to kill the proprietor and three cops as the brazen outlaws escape in a stolen car expertly driven by the nervous Luis. After losing the cops in the gas station crime, the boys are riding through Milan’s main piazza when their screw-job bloodthirsty leader, Blondie, impulsively orders them to rob the bank. In a violent show of force, Blondie kills the bank guard and Joe steals 5 million lira and Luis is the getaway driver. The harried police inspector (Tomas Milian), to no avail, bitterly bawls out the clueless parents of the trio for not raising their sons right.
The police put a wiretap on Lea’s phone and learn the trio called from a villa, but just miss them to only find a few naked girls tied up after experiencing rough sex in an orgy. The trio, joined by the gang at the villa, rob a big grocery store and in a fit of rage Blondie and Joe kill the other gang members and then return to Lea’s apartment. Not happy that she talked to the police, Blondie orders her to accompany the boys to Switzerland over Luis’s whimpers and Joe’s maniacal laughs. When two passport forgers refuse to give them the fake passports they ordered after learning of their horrible crimes, the boys brutally murder them in their junkyard. With the police setting up roadblocks throughout the city the trio goes on foot to a forest preserve, near the Swiss border. There they needlessly kill a father and son team of nature researchers camping out and a forest ranger, before their luck finally runs out and things come to the predicable conclusion but is carried off very well in a thrilling set piece.
The film gives the inept police and the youthful rebels a bad name, and is at its best when it offers no reasons why the trio is so messed up and anti-social letting the grim story play out as an exercise in chilling uncontrollable nihilism. It’s a misogynistic film, with the gang leader an incurable homicidal sociopath and possible closeted homosexual. The film is not pleasant to look at, but at least its violence wasn’t graphic and it had some entertainment value if you are into over-the-top juvenile delinquent films about young adults with severe stunted growth problems that society can’t handle.
REVIEWED ON 7/5/2014 GRADE: B- https://dennisschwartzreviews.com/