Killer Cop – Cineploit (Blu-ray)

Theatrical Release Date: Italy, 1975
Director: Luciano Ercoli
Writer: Gianfranco Calligarich
Cast: Arthur Kennedy, Claudio Cassinelli, Sara Sperati, Franco Fabrizi, Bruno Zanin, Francesco D’Adda

Release Date: April 15th, 2019
Approximate Running Time: 96 Minutes 49 seconds
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Widescreen / 1080 Progressive / MPEG-4 AVCC
Rating: NR
Sound: DTS-HD Mono Italian, DTS-HD Mono English, DTS-HD Mono German
Subtitles: English, German
Region Coding: Region Free
Retail Price: 24,90 EUR

"Commissioner Matteo Rolandi (Claudio Cassinelli) is a narcotics officer, but finds himself circumstantially intertwined with a bombing investigation, possibly a terrorist attack. He makes some critical breakthroughs on discovering the bombers’ identities, but his detective work is unappreciated by the other officers officially handling the case." - synopsis provided by the distributor

Video: 4.25/5

Here’s the information provided about this release's transfer, “English 2K Blu-Ray Premiere”.

Killer Cop comes on a 50 GB dual layer Blu-ray.

Disc Size: 45.6 GB

Feature: 27.2 GB

This release dedicates 27.2 GB’s of space to the main feature, while Raro Video’s North American Blu-ray gives the main feature 22 GB’s of space. Overall this transfer is a marked improvement over Raro Video’s transfer. With areas of greatest improvement being, black levels, compression and there appears too be no sign of digital manipulation of the image.

Audio: 3.75/5 (DTS-HD Mono Italian, DTS-HD Mono English)

This release comes with three audio options, a DTS-HD mono mix in English, a DTS-HD mono mix in Italian and a DTS-HD mono mix in German. Though the English and Italian audio mixes are in great shape, there’s some minor background hiss, Dialog comes through clearly, everything sounds balanced and range wise ambient sounds are well-represented. This release comes with two subtitle options, English and German and the English subtitles are for the Italian language track. Though subtitles are removable, you can only disable them via the setup menu.

Extras:

Extras for this release include an image gallery (28 images-posters/home video art/lobby cards), an option to listen to Stelvio Cipriani’s ten song score (you can listen to each track separately or play all), an interview with actress Valeria D’Obici titled Valeria & The Killer Cop (13 minutes 8 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo Italian with English and German subtitles), a featurette titled Stelvio Cipriani Part 1 (51 minutes 7 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo Italian with English and German subtitles), a double-sided Poster with Italian promo artwork and a media book packaging that contains a twenty-four-page booklet with bio’s for actors Arthur Kennedy, Claudio Cassinelli, Franco Fabrizi, Giovanni Cianfriglia (text in English), an essay about the film written by Michael Cholewa (text in German), bio’s in German for actors Claudio Cassinelli, Arthur Kennedy, Sara Sperati, Franco Fabrizi, Giovanni Cianfriglia, Francesco D’Adda, director Luciano Ercoli, cinematographer Marcello Gatti, composer Stelvio Cipriani and images from the film (lobby cards/posters). 

Also, this release also comes with multilingual menus, English and German.

Summary:

Though the focal point of the most Italian crime cops verse criminals. There are a handful of films which go beyond the scope of this genres set limits. Case in point is Killer Cop, which is film that starts off just like any other Italian crime film before shifting into something that goes against many of this genres staples.

The plot revolves around a narcotics detective named Matteo Rolandi and when something goes horribly wrong during one of his investigation he then becomes obsessed with uncovering the who’s and they why’s of this tragic event. This put him in conflict with another character named Armando Di Federico, a specially appointed judged who does everything he can to keep Rolandi away from the case and block him from obtaining any evidence.

Content wise as you can see this is more about police procedure and all crimes committed all pushed on the back burner until Killer Cop’s justice Italian style finale. Also besides focusing heavily on police procedure, another area where this film often puts its focus is on political aspects of the story at hand.

From a production stand point Luciano Ercoli once again delivers solid visuals. With this film’s standout moment being a pivotal hotel bombing sequence, which reinforces the political undertones. Pacing is never an issue as things move along at good pace from one revelation to the next. Giving each plot twist just enough time to settle in. Another strength of this film is another remarkable albeit familiar sounding score from Stelvio Cipriani.

Performance wise so much relies on this film’s protagonist Matteo Rolandi. And cast in this key role is an actor named Claudio Cassinelli (What Have They Done to Your Daughters?, The Suspicious Death of a Minor). Fortunately Cassinelli is up for the challenge as delivers a strong performance that does not miss a beat. Another performance of note is Arthur Kennedy (Lawrence of Arabia, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie) in the role of Armando Di Federico, the judge who is constantly at odds with Rolandi.

That said, this film’s English title Killer Cop kind of does it a disservice, while its Italian language title La polizia ha le mani legate which roughly translates into ‘The Police Have Their Hands Tied’ gives one a clearer sense of what this film is ultimately about.

Killer Cop makes its way to Blu-ray via a strong audio/video presentation from Cineploit that comes with a pair of insightful extras, recommended.

Written by Michael Den Boer