Blue Underground: High Crime (1973) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Blue Underground

Enzo G. Castellari is having something of a renaissance in the cult boutique label collecting world over the last few years.  A multitalented writer-director who dabbled across many genres including sharksploitation and post-apocalyptic Mad Max clones, Castellari’s finest hours seem steeped in the Eurocrime or poliziotteschi Italian crime subgenre.  After directing numerous spaghetti westerns and dabbling briefly in the comedy genre, Castellari set his sights on an Italian-Spanish poliziottesco film that near singlehandedly revitalized the genre in Italy with the Franco Nero starring drug lord war cop thriller High Crime.  Made in the spirit of and starring one of the principal actors of William Friedkin’s The French Connection, it represents a rare example of a role tailored for Eurocrime icon Maurizio Merli that ultimately went to Franco Nero which shows another more tense and frenzied side of the ordinarily stoic character actor behind Django.

 
Italian cop/Vice Commissioner Belli (Franco Nero) is a tough uncompromising cop tasked with uncovering a series of grisly murders in Genoa connected to Europe’s heroin empire all stemming back to Cafiero (Fernando Rey of The French Connection).  However, as Belli and chief Commissioner Aldo Scavino (James Whitmore from The Shawshank Redemption) wade deeper into the crime syndicate, key suspects and policemen start getting mysteriously picked off by assassins.  Worse still, entrusted colleagues and superiors with political connections turn out to have dirty hands and illicit connections to the crime lords.  As tensions ratchet up including Belli’s own wife and daughter being targeted now, Belli turns up the head leading towards an all-out brutal shootout in the classically polizittesco sense.

 
Vicious, intense, thrilling and a perfect candidate for one of the greatest poliziotteschi ever made, High Crime is another solid example of the distinctly Italian Eurocrime subgenre that all but reinvigorated the subgenre at the Italian box office.  Co-written by Castellari and loosely based on the real-life murder of police officer Luigi Calabresi and shot on location in Genoa by recurring Castellari stalwart Alejandro Ulloa, the look and feel of this gritty Eurocrime heroin busting world feels almost like a precursor to the director’s two Fabio Testi outings The Big Racket and The Heroin Busters where no prisoners are taken and likable characters meet grim ends.  With explosive car chases and shootouts sprinkled throughout, it proves to be a bumpy and even oppressive ride at times.

 
Featuring a funky pulsating score by Oliver Onions who themselves have scored more than a few Castellari pictures, the frenzied energy of High Crime comes through loud and clear right away.  Cut with a whip by recurring Lucio Fulci editor Vincenzo Tomassi, you feel a sense of urgency building up not just from the strength of the action set pieces but the synergy of the rapid-fire cutting.  Franco Nero, an ordinarily tough impenetrable figure onscreen, here is a tough cop and vice commissioner who resorts to unscrupulous methods that get results and in the time-honored tradition of the poliziottesco gets a lot of pushback from his superior played by James Whitmore.  Fernando Rey is more or less continuing the role incarnated by The French Connection so there isn’t too much more for him to do here but look intimidating.  Those who are really looking will spot early cameos by Mickey Knox and a young Natasha Richardson.

 
Making it’s worldwide UHD disc premiere in uncensored form as well as a blu-ray disc and CD soundtrack for those who can’t get enough of Oliver Onions, Blue Underground have turned over the sensational Eurocrime thriller in a beautifully restored and packaged 3-disc limited edition.  Replete with a collectible booklet and numerous exclusive extras, the boutique label have rolled out a fabulous package for poliziotteschi and Castellari fans keen on every nook and cranny of the Italian auteur’s filmography.  Yes some of Castellari’s later forays into sharksploitation and post-apocalyptic sci-fi action are of varying if not questionable quality, but when it came to spaghetti westerns and especially the Eurocrime genre, Castellari was a master!

--Andrew Kotwicki