Those who already had the (dis-)pleasure of reading some of my reviews might know that I have a bizarre fetish for the original, almost poetic sounding and native-language titles of Italian cult movies, whereas I have a natural aversion for the commercial, unimaginative and downright irrelevant retitling in English. Quite often, it's really preferable to just literally translate the Italian title rather than to go by the international English title. The theory definitely also stands for Luciano Ercoli's exquisite thriller "La Polizia Ha Le Mani Legate". The film is commonly known as "Killer Cop", but that is - bluntly said - a horrendous title. It makes the film sound like a hyper-violent Poliziotesschi, like Umberto Lenzi or Stelvio Massi usually made them with Maurizio Merli in the lead role, but it's much more of an intelligent and slow-brooding political thriller. Also, come to think of it, the title "Killer Cop" reveals things you're not supposed to know. The original title translates as "The hands of the police are tied" and, as usual, it's a much better and meaningful description of the overall movie.
As mentioned already, this isn't the type of contemporary Italian thriller that thrives on virulent car chases, extreme gratuitous violence or heroic coppers sadistically massacring kidnappers and drug-dealers. Instead, it's a very tense and delicate tale in which a young commissioner (Claudio Cassinelli) and a veteran district attorney (Arthur Kennedy), independently from each other, try to uncover who set off a powerful bomb in the lobby of a crowded hotel full of elite and international guests, and why this act of terrorism was committed. There isn't a lot of action in Ercoli's film, but the plot is unimaginably compelling, and I often found myself at the edge of my seat during the pivot sequences. There are a handful of unforgettable sequences, like shortly after the explosion in the hotel when the camera slowly zooms in one almost all the casualties, or the exhilarating chase in the subway station.
Luciano Ercoli perhaps isn't the most known or prominent Italian cult director from the early 70s, but it's nevertheless already the fourth film of his that I absolutely adored! Sadly, this is his only (sort of) Poliziotesschi, but he did make three wondrous gems in that other favorite Italian sub genre of mine; - the Giallo. These were "Forbidden Photos of a Lady above Suspicion", "Death Walks on High Heels" and "Death Walks at Midnight". That man earned the Nobel price of literature for his titles alone.
