Go all the way. An honest commissioner. Director Camillo Bazzoni shot a picture in his style and the theme approaching the work of Damiano Damiani. Camillo tried to show in this picture how law enforcement agencies and criminals, and in particular the drug mafia, work together. Shown by the example of one honest police Commissioner Luca Micheli, which in the film plays the notorious Frederick Stafford. In his search and the reasons for the murder of a journalist, he goes so far that the local mafia and the corrupt police commissariat begin to worry and begin to take measures to first pre-empt him, so to speak, and then eliminate him. He learns that the murdered journalist was preparing a series of exposés about the mafia. How this confrontation will end was not difficult to guess.
Throughout the film, I felt like I had already seen it. After watching enough Italian films of this kind, I found myself watching something repetitive. It seemed like I was looking at the work, the basis for which was made or partially taken from some movie I had long known. Watching Damiani’s films on the same theme, I didn’t feel that way. I think this is due to the fact that the images and actions of the characters were not quite well written in this picture. For me, F. Stafford did not quite cope with his role. He looks too dry in the picture, plays his role completely without emotions, just as I thought he was doing his job not well or bad. If it were Henry Silva or Maurizio Merly, things could have been different. And the investigation itself is somehow quite boring, it is shown routinely and longing rolls in the middle of the picture, which, however, disappears in the finale, when a dynamic and spectacular tragic outcome rolls over the viewer.
There are a few small but obvious blunders in the picture, it concerns the credibility and actions of episodic and main characters. For example, the moment with the bomb that they tried to scare the commissioner looks completely ill-conceived or the moment with his abduction when the commissioner is pushed into the car and the janitor who has this happening before his eyes sweeps the street further as if nothing had happened. Although for that time, such moments skip in many films, but if in other films this general impression does not spoil, then in this film these moments affect the overall impression of what they saw for the better. Maybe if the picture was tense over the edge and was built an interesting scenario, these moments would not pay attention, and so there is that.
The musical background for the picture from the pro Rits Ortolani, he subtly feels all the facets of the picture to which he writes music. His soundtrack fully fit, another successful creation, a professional from God. The picture with a criminal bias put murder, here they are, they look good enough, made professionally and competently shown, although there are not many, to be more precise, four.
Abuse of power – a picture that for me was not the best and not the worst representative of this direction of cinema of the time. You can get acquainted, but do not expect much. I recommend it only to real movie lovers. I recommend the rest to watch the paintings of the master of the genre Damiano Damiani.
6 out of 10