Roma violenta (1975)

Commissioner Betti, a police officer with the Rome police headquarters, has lost an eighteen-year-old brother who was shot by a criminal during a robbery. A similar incident happens on a bus, where two criminals rob the passengers and then kill a seventeen-year-old boy. Betti manages to identify one of them and beats him bloody. The man reveals that the shooter is Luciano Buzzi, known as “the Chinese,” who is then picked up and arrested. Betti hands both men over to justice, in which he has no faith. A few days later, a supermarket is robbed. The police arrive, including Betti, but are powerless to stop the robbers from escaping with a woman hostage, whom they later throw from their speeding car. Biondi discovers that the robbery was the work of Franco Spadoni’s gang. Spadoni is known as “the Nail.” Betti and Biondi begin tailing him. During the surveillance, Spadoni, joined by his accomplices, robs a bank. Betti and Biondi storm the bank, shooting and overpowering Spadoni’s two accomplices, but Spadoni manages to wound Biondi and escape. Commissioner Betti takes off after him. During the car chase, Spadoni shoots and kills three children in the street, hoping in vain to make Commissioner Betti give up the pursuit. Spadoni’s car then crashes into a roadworks site, and Betti catches up with him and kills him instead of arresting him. Formally charged over the incident by the judicial authorities, Betti resigns from the police. The next day, Betti receives a phone call from lawyer Sartori, who invites him to join an “association” formed to defend itself against attacks by the criminal underworld. After a moment’s hesitation, Betti agrees—not because he supports this kind of justice, but solely so he can fight organized crime by his own methods. The first patrol sets out that very evening, and the team catches three criminals in the act of robbing a carpet factory and beats them bloody. The following evening, however, two other criminals show up at Sartori’s home and rape his daughter, forcing her father to watch. The next day, Betti visits Biondi, who is recovering at a physical rehabilitation center. Biondi suspects it was revenge for the incident at the carpet factory: one of the gangsters has two stepbrothers to whom he is very close, and Betti concludes that they must be the ones who raped Sartori’s daughter. That same evening, the vigilantes kidnap the two men and lock them in a warehouse. Sartori arrives too and recognizes them as his daughter’s rapists. The man who had held Sartori down has his arms broken, while the rapist is kicked in the testicles. The next day, a restaurant is robbed, and a man is killed in front of his children. Despite some initial misgivings, Betti persuades the others to investigate, searching the homes of several fences, but they find nothing concrete to help their inquiry. Meanwhile, two of the robbers reach Biondi at the clinic and beat him savagely. Betti arrives just then and saves him, driving the criminals off and shooting both of them dead. Speaking with Biondi the next day, Betti explains that this time the judge decided not to prosecute him, recognizing that he had acted in self-defense. But Betti himself realizes that he could easily have shot them in the legs and avoided killing them. Biondi points out to the former commissioner that vigilante-style justice is just another form of criminality, though he admits that perhaps in certain situations he would have acted as Betti did. Uncertain and doubtful about his future, Betti says goodbye to Biondi and heads for his car. Meanwhile, the young officer imagines the commissioner’s death.