Perhaps the Best Itali-Crime Film Ever!
A hot-headed and determined police commissioner will not stop his pursuit until all the drug trafficking in Genoa is annihilated but the insidiousness of the crime’s reach within society is proving to be difficult to root out. With the help of one of Genoa’s long-in-the-tooth drug kingpins, living out the last of days before terminal illness overcomes him, the commissioner is able to put a dent into a rival organization’s trafficking schemes. When a case-building chief commissioner, aiming to get the very head of the organization’s snake, is brutally gunned down in the middle of the street and his evidence files stolen, more pressure is placed upon the criminal syndicate with more arrests, more drugs seized, and a bigger impact is made by one resolute cop while attempting to build a more damning case file his predecessor had worked on for years but the drug traffickers will not be deterred and mercilessly go after the commissioner’s loved ones.
Enzo G. Castellari’s “High Crime” is quintessential poliziotteschi. “The Inglorious Bastards” and “Keoma” director’s 1973 Italo-crime feature is about as fast-paced as it’s energetically loose-cannon of a principal protagonist. The screenplay, under the original Italian title of “La Polizia Incrimina, La Legge Assolve,” is treated by a conglomerate of Italian writers in Tito Carpi (“The Shark Hunter”), Leonard Martin (“Tragic Ceremony”), Gianfranco Clerici (“Off Balance”), and Castellari himself based off a story by producer Maurizio Amati (“The Eroticist”) and shot on and near the story locations of Genoa, Italy and the French city of Marseille. “High Crime” is actually a sequel to Romolo Guerrieri’s 1969 “Detective Belli” in which that titular character reappears in “High Crime” but more righteous and justice-prone compared to the corrupt background of Belli in antecedent film. Both movies star the same actor in the main role but have little connective elements. The feature is a production of Star Films and Capitolina Produzioni Cinematografiche and is coproduced by Edmondo Amati, father of Maurizio.
The blue-eyed “Django” actor Franco Nero is that actor portraying Commissioner Belli in both films. In “High Crime,” Nero is an exuberantly moral cop to the point he looks to be almost throwing a temper tantrum when in the face of his superior Chief Commissioner Aldo Scavino, played by American actor James Whitmore of “Them!” and “The Shawshank Redemption.” The two characters resemble night and day of how they handle crime; Scavino’s reserved nature evokes a cautionary tale to run down crime slowly but surely in building a case that would settle everything all at once whereas Belli’s take is to chase with wild abandonment that’ll risk all that he holds dear as he chips away toward a heavily fortified crime lord. Nero and Whitmore exact the personas down to the letter, nailing in the thematic message from Scavino that that the chair he sits in is hot, heavy, and full of responsibility, much the way Uncle Ben tells Peter Parker about great power carries great responsibility. In Belli’s ear, working his way into the mind of a gung-ho lawman, is drug kingpin is Cafiero by Fernando Rey, who two years prior played in a similar story of William Friedkin’s American, lone-wolf cop story “The French Connection.” Rey adds sophisticated demure to his really bad guy character to appear like an ally in not only the eyes of Belli, who really puts his trust in Cafiero, but also the audiences who will forget he’s an equal in the drug game. What’s interesting and dynamic about “High Crime” is the woven character arcs and fats that quickly develop and quickly diminish through Belli’s investigation. In the mix of this unsafe space for any character is Della Boccardo (“Tentacles”), Silvano Tranquilli (“The Bloodstained Butterfly), Duilio Del Prete (“The Nun and the Devil”), Mario Erpichini (“Spasmo”), Ely Galleani (“A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin”), Stefania Castellari (“1990: The Bronx Warriors”), Bruno Corazzari (“Necorpolis”), and Luigi Diberti (“The Stendhal Syndrome”).
“High Crime” deals in high impact. Car chases, shoot outs, foot pursuits, murder hits, and more that genetically makeup Castellari’s film with a centralized hero destined for tragedy spurred by his own ambition, texturing the character with an anti-hero wallpaper as he can’t see past his own objective and the direct danger that blind ambition poses. Kneaded into this notion is Caastellari’s fantastic use of editing and scene transition that provides a seamless continuity as also misleading truths. Editor Vincenzo Tomassi (“Zombie”) cuts and splices with great continuity care to arrange multiple shoots of one scene, such as the opening car chase between Belli’s squad car pursing a Lebanese drug supplier, to match every angle without losing track or bewildering audiences with implausibility. The transition scenes also stun with zoom-in and zoom-outs that segue different scenes, a previous moment may bleed into another with deceptive infiltration of the next scene, and Castellari uses sounds too to transition to the next shots. These on-your-toes transitions commingling with the ever-dynamic, fast-paced crime story with a high mortality rate, high character development, and high emotional roller coaster loop-the-loops whirling around the abundant and impressively rounded characters solidify “High Crime” as the holy grail of highly valued and highly entertaining poliziotteschi!
If you’ve ever wanted more out of Enzo G. Castellari’s “High Crime,” Blue Underground has you covered with a limited edition 3-Disc, UHD HD Blu-ray, Standard Blu-ray, and soundtrack CD set packed with content in the HVEC and AVC encoded double layers of the 2160p 4K UHD BD66 and 1080p Blu-ray BD50. The brand-new 2024 Dolby Vision HDR 4K master stuns. Image resolution connected with balanced contrast results in a vibrant, crisp-sharp quality rendered from a stellar original 35mm print, presented in the original aspect ratio of a widescreen 1.85:1. There’s not an arresting softness to be had as details emerge in the various Genoa and Marseilles ship ports, manufacturing parks, and concrete city landscapes bursting with infrastructural texture. There’s also plenty of minute detail on skin textures with a touch of technicolor process for a dash of properly installed pigmentation. This sort of scrutinizing care translates also to the post-ADR English 1.0 DTS-HD audio mix with an uncompressed, lossless fidelity. Dialogue is post-recorded with the original actor’s voices providing better authenticity in comparison to other voice actors, especially over the gruff American voice of James Whitmore. Environmental ambience doesn’t miss an action with a complete and broad line of virtual city sounds coupled with in-scene ambient sound, all converted and individualistic defined through the single channel, supported by Oliver Onions brothers Guido and Maurizio De Angelis providing a catchy copper beat whether be car chase or foot pursuit. There also an Italian dub 1.0 DTS-HD. English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing are optionally available as well as French, Spanish, and English for the Italian audio feature. Hours of bonus materials lined the encoded BDs, more so on the second disc, the Standard Blu-ray, due to capacity. Disc 1, the 4K UHD, houses an audio commentary with director Enzo G. Castellari, a second audio commentary with star Franco Nero, a third audio commentary with film history Troy Howarth, Nathaniel Thompson, and Eugenio Ercolani, an alternate ending that fades to black rather than the original freeze frame, and the theatrical trailer. Disc 2, the standard Blu-ray,, has all of the above plus interviews with Castellari and Nero The Genoa Connection, an separate interview with Castellari From Dus to Asphalt, an interview with stuntman Massimo Vanni Hard Stunts for High Crimes, an interview with camera operator Roberto Girometti Framing Crime, an interview with soundtrack composers Guido and Maurizio De Angelis The Sound of Onions, a Mike Malley directed featurette The Connection Connection featured in EUROCRIME!, and a poster with still gallery. The double wide Amaray case also comes with its own special attributes, such as a rigid O-slipcover with compositional illustration of pretty much all the action you’ll see in the film. The slipcover also contains embossed textile elements for a junior-sized 3D effect. The set has a reversible front cover with the primary art the same as the slipcover’s while the inside contains an original poster art replica. The insert side contains a dual-sided cardboard track list and soundtrack info on top of the back and red original motion picture soundtrack CD. The 4K UHD and Blu-ray on the opposite side are staggered in individual push locks where you have to remove the top disc in order to get the bottom disc and they’re too pressed with the same art from the reversible front cover. Blue Underground outdid themselves with “High Crime’s” first Blu-ray release, curated to perfection, in the U.S. The Not Rated Blue Underground set is playable on all regions and has an uncensored, uncut runtime of 103 minutes.
Last Rites: To simply write positively about “High Crime” and Blue Underground’s merit 3-disc set is simply not enough. Fans of William Friedkin’s “The French Connection” and other moviegoing fans can find this Eurocrime thriller to be captivating from start to finish.
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