This Italian suspenser seems to take the American film DOG DAY AFTERNOON as its main source of inspiration, as after a hit-and-miss first half it turns into a tense hostage drama with a restaurant (!) replacing the more typical bank-and-cashiers scenario. The structure of the film is unusual, to say the least, as there is no definite beginning, middle or end. The film just carries on until a logical conclusion and presents the "facts" in a cold, realistic fashion. Once again, as with Umberto Lenzi's polizia films, the theme is of the young, oppressed working classes taking revenge against the middle and upper classes by torturing, raping and murdering them. Only to make matters more complicated, one of the two criminals is himself a member of the upper class elite, turned over to the dark side (as it were) via drugs and easy persuasion.The film opens as a static social drama and takes about twenty minutes to become focused. This is the genuinely shocking moment when an innocent young girl and her middle-aged neighbour are brutally raped by the pair of doped-up thugs and the older woman ends up being gruesomely stabbed to death. The pair flee and then embark on the usual anti-social activities; beating up folk, stealing, and generally causing a disturbance. The film really comes together during the initial hostage situation which then becomes drawn-out overnight. What follows is a tense, gripping drama which becomes increasingly harder to watch as various hostages are killed, suffer and are subjected to sexual intimidation by the two anti-heroes. The police presence - led by a moustachioed inspector - talks a lot and negotiates, but their efforts prove to be a failure on the most part.Although the trappings of the polizia genre are present and correct, this is by no means a typical crime thriller. Instead it fits into the small sub-genre of hostage/negotiation movies and stands as a well-made and suspenseful example of such. Technical values are a plus, with great filmography and a wonderful exciting piece of music which pops up occasionally. Although short on action sequences, the film has plentiful bloody violence and nudity to appeal to the exploitation market. The acting is generally of a high standard, especially with the two leads Mario Cutini and Marco Marati who manages to develop their characters convincingly into three-dimensional human beings instead of being stock bad guys. DAY OF VIOLENCE is a mainly forgotten film these days, which is a shame because it ranks as one of the stronger examples of adult Italian cinema, treading the fine line between being shocking and in bad taste.

Once you get hooked to the Poliziotteschi genre - like I am - there are literally heaps of obscure titles to discover, but in all honesty and fairness a lot of them only contain two or three great sequences while the rest of the film is dull and disappointing. Not coincidentally, the vast majority of these obscure and disappointing movies are written and directed by unknown Italians. If you want guaranteed euro-crime top quality material, you better stick to the works of guys like Umberto Lenzi, Fernando Di Leo, Stelvio Massi, Enzo G. Castellari and perhaps two or three others. The writer/director of this "Day of Violence" is named Luigi Petrini and he clearly isn't one of the more successful names in the industry. The screenplay contains a handful of bright ideas and the film features a few interesting highlights, but most of the running time I was bored and too easily distracted. The good aspects include that the themes of Petrini's script effectively criticize the contemporary Italian political & social circumstances (desperate youth, unemployment, economic recession and revolt against the upper class…) and that the events of the entire film take place during one and the same day. Two twenty-something and sexually frustrated blokes meet each other outside a private party. One got kicked out just before he could have sex with the daughter of the house and the other one couldn't perform when he had the chance. Driven by anger and drugs, they decide to go the girl's apartment and "finish what they started". They rape the poor girl but also murder their neighbor and descend further into madness. The next brilliant decision they make is to invade a fancy restaurant and take all customers hostage at gunpoint. From then onward, you'd expect "Day of Violence" to turn into a blatant imitation of "Dog Day Afternoon" but it doesn't really. The Al Pacino classic was a harsh parody about the influence of the media, but here the action primarily remains indoors and reverts to dreadful clichés like Stockholm Syndrome etc. There's a lot of talking but very little action and even less violence. The acting performances are mundane and the sleaze is unpleasant, but the good news is that the soundtrack is exhilarating and the climax is short 'n' sweet!

Luigi Pertini directs this startling and deeply exhilarating entry in the lurid euro crime oeuvre. Two hapless thugs meet at a particularly square party and spontaneously decide to wreak havoc on middle-class society with a zesty, drunken orgy of rape, bloody fisticuffs and all manner of delirious misanthropy. 'Day of Violence' really is must have for lovers of Italian gonzoid sleaze; mustache-maverick cops and naer - do-well misfits butt heads in this violent & immensely satisfying thick- ear actioner. All aided considerably by a gloriously grimy, Lalo Schifrinoid crime-funk sound track by Bixio-Frizzi-Tempera. Bloody marvelous! (onus on the claret that the director wisely splashes all over the screen) 'Day of Violence' remains one of my personal favorites, due to the muscular, unfussy direction from Luigi Pertini; the fabulously infectious grooves by Bixio-Frizzi-Tempera and righteous, full-blooded thuggery from our two particularly venomous and amoral leads; you'd be hard pressed to find a more satisfying heft of cathartic, kick the bourgeois in the knackers ultra-violence; this is pure exploitation genius. A painful reminder of how dull and insipid modern aggro-prop cinema has become.

A better than average Italian crime thriller for two reasons: firstly the story happens during one day, which creates dramatic tension, and secondly there aren't too many characters to follow.Also the motivations for the protagonists are carefully construed from social and psychological issues such as poverty and masculinity. Apart from all this the film still delivers on the level usually expected from Italian seventies genre films: lots of unnecessary violence, often sexual, and nudity too.Recommended for fans of the genre. Released on video in Finland in the early eighties.