Tag Archives: Eugenio Ercolani

Nothing Will Stop Detective Belli from Bringing Down EVIL Heroin Traffickers!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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.

Grab this Limited Edition Set of “High Crime” Before Its Gone!

Its Punk to Fight Back Against EVIL Neo-Nazis! “Green Room” reviewed! (Second Sight Films / 4K UHD – Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Green Room” Now Available on a 4K UHD and Blu-ray Limited Edition Release. Purchase Here!

Hardcore punk band Ain’t Rights struggle to make ends meet as they syphon gas and crash at a pursual journalist’s apartment just to make it across country to the west coast.  When the initial paying gig falls through the cracks, the journalist’s backup plan is his cousin’s spot out in the isolated Pacific Northwest for decent pay.  The only downside to the job is it’s at a neo-Nazi bar.  A successful go-hard set pays off until one fatal witness of a heinous murder confines the band to the bar’s green room and outside, waiting, are plotting neo-Nazi’s concocting a cover up strategy that doesn’t let the Ain’t Rights see another day alive.  Surrounded with nowhere to go, the ruthlessly calculating skinheads use attack dogs, machetes, and other vicious tactics to keep the Ain’t Rights from escaping and learning the truth behind the skinheads’ already sordid and bigoted movement but the tightknit band won’t go quietly down without fighting for their very lives. 

If there is any chance of seeing Captain Jean-Luc Picard himself, the knighted Sir Patrick Stewart, act in a neo-Nazi leadership role, then everyone should share the experience of just how terrifying Stewart can be as a cold-hearted villain.  Jeremy Saulnier’s breakout 2015 film, chockfull of violence and suspense, titled “Green Room” is masterclass grit for survival and to never underestimate the underdog.  Saulnier, the debut filmmaker of 2007’s “Murder Party,” wrote and directed the film shot on site in the densely large forests of Oregon and set the stage for being one of the truest and vehement hardcore punk-laced stories to be told that happens to have a side dish of killer instinct.  Produced by Neil Kopp (“Paranoid Park”), Victor Moyers (“Orphan:  First Kill”), Brian S. Johnston (“Wish Upon”), and actor and longtime Jeremy Saulnier associates, Macon Blair and Anish Savjani, “Green Room” is a production of Broad Green Pictures and Film Science.

Though Sir Patrick Steward is a thespian legend, having been in numerous films and stage plays in the decades of the practice, practically a household name amongst fanatical and the casual moviegoer, the now 83-year-old English actor is not the principal star of “Green Room.”  That falls under the late Anton Yelchin in his late theatrical role.  The established new kid on Hollywood’s block, having seen success in roles from “Alpha Dog,” “Star Trek,” to “Terminator:  Salvation” along with indies such as “Odd Thomas,” and yet was still an up-and-coming young actor who tragically joined the infamous urban legend of the 27 club, where celebrities have died too young at the age of 27, Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain are also members of this pop culture phenomena, helmed as lead guitar Pat of the fictional punk band called the Ain’t Rights and Pat becomes intwined as spokesperson to negotiate with Darcy, the manipulatively devious neo-Nazi leader played by Sir Patrick Stewart.  Yelchin’s realistic approach to do the right thing favors the nervously anxious and uncertain body language amongst an already prejudice crowd who are known to be unpredictable and dangerous.  Stewart’s role is emotionless but not taciturn as Darcy who quickly and cleverly decides the fate of witnesses to a brutal murder inside his place of business in what is nearly a duplicated performance from Stewart’s role in “Conspiracy Theory,” as the calm and collected Dr. Jonas eager to get his hands on Mel Gibson’s agitated knowledge of secret dubious schemes.  Pat fights for his life whereas Darcy plans for his death and Yelchin and Stewart apt those two behaviors in a contrast of contention.  Yelchin is backed by his costars, aka Ain’t Right bandmates, Alia Shawkat (“The Final Girls”), Joe Cole (“Pressure”), and Collum Turner (“Victor Frankenstein”) along with a traitor of the fascist cause in Imogen Poots (“28 Weeks Later”) who, in varying degrees, deal with being mice caught inside a shoebox inside a cat factory.  As for the skinheads, a lot is squeezed out from Macon Blair’s Gabe, an uneasy, unsure, bordering fumbling go-along neo-Nazi, as Darcy’s plan unfolds and pivots into more and more of the uncomfortable for the character, but for the rest of the skinheads, such as Clark (Kai Lennox, “Apartment 143”) the dog handler, Big Justin (“Eric Edelstein, “The Hills Have Eyes 2”), and even Darcy don’t fully flesh out once they’re fully engaged in the problem at hand.  David Thompson (“Fear Street:  Part 1”), Brent Werzner, Taylor Tunes (“The Motel ‘6’”), and Mark Webber (“13 Sins”) fill out the cast.

The ”Green Room” narrative is in itself very punk, following an ethos of anti-establishment and a do-it-yourself anarchist pathway in protest for what is right and against greed.  Engrained is the very subculture “Green Room” exposes on the surface level but the essence of the direct action is right there in front of us the whole time soaked into a group of true believers of the punk music and movement, struggling with less than nothing to live on, are trying to do what’s right after witnessing the aftermaths of a gruesome murder and wants to correct the action immediately despite seemingly to look like they would turn the other cheek toward crime.  Instead, they have to go against the xenophobic-authoritarian grain with nothing but grit and whatever is in proximity of arms’ length.  Authenticity is so important to writer-director Jeremy Saulnier and to the film’s success that the Ain’t Right actors actually play the instruments and perform the music themselves with a couple of them learning how to be instrument proficient for the character and the story.  Another truth attributed to the “Green Room” is Saulnier penchant for graphic violence.  From the very first fray, the tone sets in at grim and grue with no one being safe and no one pegged to be the clearcut hero from the get-go. “Green Room” is viscerally charged, uncompromisingly bloody, and embodies all the best characteristics of punk. 

In the 9 years since the film’s release, nearly 8 years since Anton Yelchin’s untimely death, the “Green Room” finally receives the attention and respect it deserves with a new and deluxe limited edition collector’s set from UK distributor Second Sight Films. The 2-Disc, 4K UHD and Blu-ray set, presenting the feature in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio, offers the ultra-high definition resolution Dolby Vision to brings to the table the best image representation possible and what lands is a delineated and detailed image that’s de facto devoid of any kind of compression artefacts. Blacks saturate without losing contours or bearing the brunt of banding or posterization and distinctly lays out the color palette with an overlay of some dingy-filmed gel lighting in a few scenes inside the neo-Nazi club or low-key lighting in other areas, again in the club or even outside the club, that usually tend to see more problems which is non-existent in this conversion. The transfer fairs well within the smaller UHD range of a HVEC encoded BD66 capacity while still leaving room for bonus content. The 2K scanned Blu-ray is AVC encoded BD50 renders nearly an identical in faultless image quality, decoding at the same rate of 23-24Mbps, yet still an inferior presentation to the 4K with the depth of detail. Both video transfers are clean yet the upgrade to UHD bests all other releases to date. Both formats offer a lossless English language DTS-HD 5.1 master audio mix that are identical technically and to the untrained/trained ear, offering clean, true fidelity with a punk rock soundtrack that’s welcoming hardcore yet can differentiate between the layers with a clean, prominent dialogue and near proximity ambience. Depth and range are good on both accounts but add little to the creation of suspense as much of that area is handled by situational context and depiction of graphic violence. English subtitles are optionally available. The software special features include a new audio commentary by film critics Reyna Cervantes and Prince Jackson, an older, archival commentary by writer-director Jeremy Saulnier, a new interview with the director Going Hardcore, a new interview with actor Callum Turner Punk Rock, a new interview with composes Brooke and Will Blair Rocking Out, and a new interview with production designer Ryan Warren Smith Going Green. Also found on the special features are the Thomas Caldwell on “Green Room” archival featurette Nazi Punks Fuck Off and the making of the film, a behind-the-scenes featurette Into the Pit. Hardware special features, that we all love from Second Sight’s limited-edition sets, come with that rigid box slipcase with new artwork by commercial illustrator Adam Stothard, a 120-page new essay book with contributions by Eugenio Ercolani and Gian Giacomo, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Josh Hutardo, Jolene Richardson, Shelagh Rowan-Legg, and Thomas Watson, and six collectors’ art cards to round out the contents in a nice tight and quietly opulent sensational packaging. The region free UHD and region B set is UK certified 18 for strong blood violence and gore with a runtime of 95 minutes.

Last Rites: This new and limited edition “Green Room” release is red hot and the deserving, contemporary thriller, the last for the gone-too-soon Anton Yelchin, couldn’t have been better curated by a more devil-in-the-detail and fan-focused label of Second Sight Films.

“Green Room” Now Available on a 4K UHD and Blu-ray Limited Edition Release. Purchase Here!