Year: 1976
Duration: 01:32:49
Directed by: Romolo Guerrieri
Actors: Eleonora Giorgi, Tomas Milian, Stefano Patrizi
Language: Italian | English
Country: Italy
Also known as: Juventud armada y peligrosa, Liberi armati pericolosi, Jeunes, désespérés, violents, Les féroces, Racket Boys, Adistaktoi kai sklirotrahiloi, Oplismenoi kai epikindynoi, Via sti via, Bewaffnet und gefährlich, Dirty Devils
Description:
This might be an interesting film. It’s a propensity of Italian exploitation films in general to eschew logical character and plotting development to focus on elaborate cinematic “set pieces”. While this generally works with gialli (and some would state cannibal and zombie movies)it is frequently problem in the Italian crime films where the set pieces usually include shoot-outs and overlong automobile chases, two areas where the Italians had NO opportunity of outdoing bigger-budget Hollywood movies (although they frequently did their damnedest). This film is worthwhile therefore because it DOES have a lot of personality improvement particularly among the villains, three privileged youths that become eager crooks after their clean-cut but more and more psychotic frontrunner, “Blondie”, begins a gun struggle during a botched gas station robbery. One of the other youths is a more obviously deranged thrill seeker, while the third youth, the “wheel-man” is distinctly non-violent but loyal to a fault to his two buddies.
Rounding out the cast is the girlfriend of the wheel-man (Eleanora Giorgi) who ironically sets the entire thing in motion by stating the burglary plans to the police (and mistakenly informing them that the trio just have toy guns). The head cop meanwhile is played by Tomas Milan, generally the psychotic heavy in these sort of films. Milan gives an iconic existence and is an interesting character in that he is not unsympathetic but is additionally not the usual borderline-fascist “rebel with a badge” frequently seen in these films. Mainly he simply demonstrates tragically incompetent at stopping the rampaging youths.
The plot is mainly pretty credible except for a scene where they hook up with another team of youths and shoot-up and rob a grocery store, even killing their own accomplices for no great reason. There’s some pretty gratuitous nudity including a pretty sorry excuse to get Giorgi topless (but who’s gonna complain about that too much?). The ending is generally unfavorable, but that’s one thing I admire about these films over the violence-glorifying spirit versions. See this if you like Italian crime thrillers–or also if you don’t.
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