I watched the new Raro DVD of this Italian crime movie last night and must say that I found it to be a very fine picture. I think it is usually dismissed by Eurocult-ists because it is not all that flamboyant, and Tomas Milian is not remotely outlandish.

I dislike both THE VIOLENT PROSFESSIONALS and SQUADRA VOLANTE I find them to be very messy and unfocused. A lot of people like these movies for the car chases but I find they are often "longer" than they are entertaining. YOUNG, VIOLENT, DESPERATE contained, to my mind, a genuinely exciting car chase with real traffic moving on the busy streets. It seemed more effort and imagination went into this chase.

The film concerns three well to do youths who end up on a crime spree due to boredom and middle class malaise. The police pursue them. It's as simple as that. I don't like to say that the movie has ideas above its station because it generally isn't all that exploitative as these things go. It certainly throws up some interesting bits of character and social observation. Cop Milian lectures parents on child rearing and forms a bond with one of the youth's girlfriends. He has a certain concern for the criminals, like a "social father" he regrets that these lives have gone so astray. There is a complicated sado- masochistic relationship between two of the youths, and this relationship and the movie itself are both resolved in a very interesting finale.

I think this is a quality, entertaining film. It probably won't satisfy some people because the crime spree, while pretty unbelievable, isn't exactly ALMOST HUMAN type stuff. Though it does contain the odd killing and mini- massacre, the movie shifts gear for the second half and becomes more character driven.

Tomas Milian is a revelation here, he plays the role perfectly straight, as director Romolo Guerrieri says like the Milian of ten years before. There are, as the liner notes point out, parallels between this movie and BANDITS IN MILIAN which also featured Milian playing straight as a cop. He still has the star power and appeal here and plays his scenes well. It goes to show he really was an actor and not a ham. Anyone who dismisses the film as one in which Milian looks bored because he is not Monezza will probably not enjoy the picture.

In the supplemental documentery interview Romolo Guerrieri describes how he persuaded Milian to play this role and mentions that for personal reasons Milian was totally caught up in hiding and disguises. It would be very interesting to read more about Milian (would that I spoke Italian). I wonder perhaps if he had a drug problem at the time or something because looks very thin and gaunt. Guerrieri refuses to tell any tales about him.

The rest of the cast are good too particularly the girl Eleonora Giorgi, while the boys convey the necessary messed -up - ness. Benjamin Lev's character is pretty annoying but I think every group of friends that age has one?

The Raro disc has English and Italian tracks with English subs for the latter. Like with LIVE LIKE A COP DIE LIKE A MAN the audio isn't great and needs to be turned up pretty high. The docu is also subtitled in English.

Heartily recommended. Oh and James, it has motorbikes!


Michael C.

I had a copy of this film for years, but didn't watch it until recently to see if the disc was worth purchasing. I liked the film but had a huge problem with the three main characters. Simply put, they are three of the most annoying characters ever put on screen, especially the short third guy. And it doesn't help that the leader looks just like David Spade! Perhaps it is just the English dub that bothers me. I will give the film credit for casting Milian against type and featuring an AMAZING ending. Thanks for the review.

I feared that the movie wasn't going to be any good with the goofy opening credits where the three leads mug the camera smiling and dancing that turned out to be delightfully deceptive of things to come. It's an okay crime movie that delivers all the prerequisite stuff with not too heavy handed social statement mixed in. One thing I especially like it's that the big moral about upper middle class's bad parenting is spelled out very early on to keep the story moving.

I felt that there are some ideas (at least a suggestion of them) with the disdain the boys felt toward the behavior of the other amateur gang (who are much richer than they are) and the passport forgers. Class warfare! :D Plus the lines on the corrupt consumerist society during the marketplace sequence.

The Italian dub is probably the way to go this time because all the lip movements match the Italian track. From the scenes I've sampled, the performances in the English dub were weaker.

Indeed. If Eleonora Giorgi weren't so gorgeous, I would have been tempted to fast-forward through a lot of the "character-building" scenes. We were all disappointed when the crazy guy didn't get killed off early in the movie.

I agree that it was nice that most of the political speechifying and moralizing got knocked out early in the film, but no moralizing would have been preferable. And Tomas Milian's character should have been fired for not preventing the massacre in the beginning.