Raro Video released The Fernando Di Leo: The Italian Crime Collection Vol. 2 on Blu-ray on July 30th, 2013.
I had a bit of a love affair with Netflix when I became a member in the early 2000s. For the first time, for a flat rate I could rent as many movies as I could lay my eyeballs on. That inspired me to take risks, and I went deep down an Italian crime cinema rabbit hole; never to return. Names like Enzo Castellari and Fabio Testi and Franco Nero became sacred to me. I couldn’t get enough of the era, the testosterone, the production design… it was cinematic heaven. But even though I counted myself a fan of Di Leo’s vision of the crime in Italy’s 1970s, I hadn’t seen any of the titles featured in Raro’s brand new Blu-ray boxed set of 3 of Di Leo’s underworld entries.
I’m going to delve into some spoilers below as I cover each of the three films in the set. These are films from the late ’60s and ’70s, after all. But that said, if you don’t want any spoilers, here is the low down: I’d definitely recommend checking out both volumes of Raro’s Di Leo sets. While Volume 1 features some of his more high profile titles like Calibre 9 and Il Boss, you’ll also find some gems here in Volume 2. I personally felt that Naked Violence was the least engaging or thrilling, and while Shoot First, Die Later is the centerpiece of this set (a previously unreleased on DVD or Blu-ray “lost” crime masterpiece), I still had the best time watching The Kidnap Syndicate.
Within this set, you’ll find some extreme cinematic highs such as incredible time capsules of style, elevated action set pieces, and hard boiled crime with no punches pulled. You’ll also hit a few lows including occasionally heavy handed morality plays, mixed with sex-panther levels of machismo and disturbingly backwards views on sexuality and gender. This boxed set is a time machine that will transport you to a less politically correct time which will thrill you with films that foretell the careers of Michael Mann and Quentin Tarantino, among other crime-film greats. Seek out Fernando Di Leo if you count yourself a fan of crime films.
Naked Violence (1969)
Part police procedural, part political commentary, and part giallo, Naked Violence is a fairly interesting mystery that seems to primarily exist to explore Italy’s handling of juvenile delinquency and the justice system’s impotence. Instantly unsettling, the film’s opening titles loom and leer in close up on a classroom full of juvenile delinquents who “get out of hand really fast” and drunkenly rape and murder their teacher right in their own classroom. The imagery is shocking and jarring, and very intentionally so. Even as we see what happens in the classroom, we feel disoriented and find ourselves just as confused as the detectives who take up the murder case after the opening credits conclude. The rest of the film will follow Detective Lieutenant Lamberti (Pier Paolo Capponi) as he tries to get to the bottom of exactly what happened in that classroom.
Lamberti is convinced that a more seasoned and hardened criminal than these young boys is behind the gang rape and murder. Who put these boys up to this grisly crime and why won’t any of them confess the truth? He’ll fight his superiors to stay on the case and get to the bottom of this murder. He’ll use all kinds of questionable tactics, but Lamberti is always portrayed as an upright man who genuinely wants to bring about justice for the dead.
What he uncovers is classic giallo territory: the mastermind behind the crime will be revealed, and you will probably be disturbed. But you may be more appalled at the film’s treatment of homosexuality as a potential source for the murderous tendencies of the real villains. That said, aside from the dated gender roles, I found Naked Violence to be an engaging mystery filled with explosive moments of intense close-ups and unflinching story telling.
Shoot First, Die Later (1974)
I will concede that this is the best film in the collection, and is clearly the centerpiece of this boxed set. (And rightly so, since Raro are the first to release the film on either DVD or Blu-ray anywhere in the world.) But while this is the “best” film, it wasn’t my favorite. We’ll get to The Kidnap Syndicate shortly, though.
Shoot First, Die Later is the first film I’ve ever seen starring heart-throb and frequent Di Leo collaborator Luc Merenda. The guy rocks bell-bottoms like no one else in history. He’ll backhand you without looking at you and then light a cigarette in your face just to spite you. Here in Shoot First, he plays Detective Domenico Malacarne, a hero cop.
The film begins with a charming and “popular with the ladies” Malacarne using only his powers of observation to foresee a massive diamond heist, which he single-handedly stops after a balls-out amazing car chase and shoot out sequence. The movie opens with a legitimate bang and sufficiently establishes Malacarne as a Dirty Harry-esque hero. It feels familiar to American audiences. We love big explosive action intros to tell us everything we need to know about our heroes.
Trouble is, in the very next section of the film we see that Di Leo has some tricks up his sleeve… because in fact, Malacarne is on the take with some of the city’s most vile gangsters. His whole lifestyle that we were introduced to in the opening sequence is made possible through pay offs and bribes.
As the film unfolds there will be a serious tension as you’ll find yourself halfway rooting for Malacarne and simultaneously being disappointed in him much as his aging policeman father is.
Here in 2013, we’ve seen a ton of “dirty cop” films, and you get the sense that Shoot First, Die Later may be an essential entry in this genre, without which we wouldn’t have many of today’s modern crime classics. But even coming from the perspective of having seen dozens of dirty cop movies, Shoot First, Die Later still offers Hollywood-surpassing action sequences, a smart and deceptive screenplay structure, and a very frank condemnation of a lawman who colludes with the mob. I won’t delve into specifics on the ending, but the film literally closes with the words “crime doesn’t pay” emblazoned on the screen.
And while I think the film is wonderful, it was here at the end of Shoot First, Die Later that I fully concluded that Di Leo, an intellectual and well-read political leftist, might not be the most subtle of filmmakers.
The Kidnap Syndicate (1975)
While Shoot First, Die Later is clearly the greater accomplishment of crime film storytelling and even action set piece flawlessness; The Kidnap Syndicate is a blue collar revenge fantasy that had me cheering for our hero and celebrating the 99% and their plight to take down The Man.
The Kidnap Syndicate begins as a bit of a drama. The strapping Luc Merenda once again teams with Di Leo. This time he plays widower, single father, and former motorcycle racer Mario Colella. When Colella’s son gets kidnapped at school while trying to protect his friend (the intended subject of the kidnapping), Colella finds himself wrapped up in a kidnapping situation that is above his pay grade. James Mason plays a wealthy construction magnate who gets all the attention and press regarding the kidnapping, even though the motorcycle mechanic’s son is just as “kidnapped” as the rich boy is.
Again, this is spoiler laden and I just had to warn you once again because I didn’t know what direction this film was going to go in, or how exploitative it would get. But The Kidnap Syndicate goes from a harrowing and emotional kidnap drama right into revenge fantasy territory when Mason’s character’s bargaining with the kidnappers seems to result in the murder of Colella’s son.
After an emotional scene in the morgue as Colella both identifies his son’s body and curses James Mason for his turning the situation into a business negotiation, Colella goes on a rampage to rival the revenge fantasy epics of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Where Tarantino’s revenge fantasies offer a gleeful societal therapy as Jewish soldiers demolish Hitler and a freed slave burns down the whole institution of slavery, Di Leo’s The Kidnap Syndicate offers a revenge fantasy for the blue collar class to rise up against the rich and powerful who have ignored them and mistreated them for too long.
Colella (somewhat unrealistically) morphs from a humble and loving father who just happened to be a former motorcycle racer into a smart, cool, and collected revenge machine. He will take the power back from the syndicate behind his son’s kidnapping. The path to revenge will be fraught with revelations and collateral damage. But I found the tone of the film to be thrill-inducing and I cheered my way through the whole second half. No, Colella’s quest for vengeance can do nothing to bring his son back to him. But Di Leo takes that tragedy and uses it to fuel the fire of discontent against the rich and powerful who always seem to get away with murder. Colella becomes a force of nature who outsmarts seasoned criminals at every turn and races motorcycles and fire machine guns with righteous vengeance. A nuanced exploration of class warfare this is not, but you’ll cheer and pump your fists and you can’t ask for much more than that!
The Package
Di Leo made gritty films about crime in the city. And so it would simply be wrong for a high definition transfer to remove all of that grit. The transfers of these classic films are exactly the way I wanted them: beautiful and filmic, with just the right amount of film grain and classic grit. Di Leo isn’t afraid of uncomfortable close-ups and the faces in his films tell their own stories. So Blu-ray is a wonderful format for these films. And these loving transfers bring you the best of high definition technology along with the aesthetic of the 1970s that made these films what they are.
So the films and their presentations are pretty wonderful. With this set you’ll also get a physical booklet that spends most of it’s time breaking down the history of Shoot First, Die Later. Each disc has one or two special features as well. None of these features are brand new or created for this set, and some of them are downright rough in their presentation. But the content rises above the presentation. You’ll see archival interview footage with Di Leo, stars Luc Merenda and Pier Paolo Capponi, and you’ll hear all kinds of insightful commentary on the films from European critics and fans as well as the people behind the films themselves.
So while the bonus features aren’t original, and look lifted straight out of the video era, they ultimately deepen your knowledge and appreciation of each of the films and I can’t ask for much more from a smaller distribution house like Raro.
I’d love to pick up Volume 1 of this series now that I own Volume 2, and I recommend this set to anyone who has a soft spot for crime films, Italian cinema, or film’s greatest cinematic tough guys.
And I’m Out.