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.

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.

Day of Violence is a little bit different from the usual Polizi flick; and if it wasn't for the fact that Sidney Lumet's masterpiece Dog Day Afternoon was released two years earlier; I might say that this film was quite original. Still, in spite of being another Italian rip-off - this film is not bad at all. The film takes the basic idea of two men holding a bunch of people hostage and gives it a much more exploitative theme and the film does have a 'Last House on the Left' vibe running throughout which ensures that the atmosphere is always nasty and overbearing. The plot focuses on two men who decide to rape a woman. Not long after the rape, the cops are out looking for them and they decide that the only way they can get out of the mess they are in is to go to a high class restaurant and take the customers hostage. So, they set out and buy a couple of guns and walk into the restaurant before announcing that nobody is to leave! The cops soon turn up on the scene and we watch the action from the inside as the criminals interact with the hostages.The main point of Dog Day Afternoon was to show how a media circus can be created. This film doesn't follow that point or any other really, although there is some reference to the lack of jobs going in Italy at the time. Day of Violence is an extremely rare film and hasn't got itself the fan base of some of the Italian rip-offs of more popular films, which is a bit of a shame as this film is likely to please many genre fans. Day of Violence was obviously shot on a budget and the production values are not particularly impressive; although the film is actually fairly well directed and while nobody in the cast will win any awards; the ensemble of performances comes off quite well also. The film adheres to the template set out by Dog Day Afternoon fairly closely and the only real difference between the two is that this film is a bit nastier. There's not a great deal of violence in the film, which is a bit disappointing considering the title and the rest of the genre that it comes from and that is a bit of a failing point for the film. Still, if you can find a copy of this one; it's well worth a look!

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.