Poor Mario Adorf. He just wants to pimp out his girls in Milan and give the cash to his ex-wife and his sickly young daughter. He's not a bad guy really, although he doesn't like it when guys try to rough up his girls. Mario's just getting on with his petty criminal life when all of a sudden he's being hunted down not only by the local crime boss, but by two hard faced American hit men too. The hit men, Henry Silva and Woody Strode, have been sent to track him down and kill him in the most violent and brutal way possible as lesson from the US Mafia to those in Italy thinking of stealing heroin shipments. This might be all well and good, if in fact Mario had actually stolen anything. Instead the poor guy spends most of the film being hunted down like a dog while having no idea whatsoever why people want to kill him. There's more pressure on Mario as the local don (Adolfo Celi) doesn't like the presence of two American gangsters on his turf and sends his men out to capture Mario. Every petty criminal in Milan knows that Mario's a marked man, so who can he trust? His hookers?While this is a little thin story wise, the film itself is rather good. Henry Silva truly looks like a guy who would stab you in the face one minute then put the moves on your wife the next. Woody Strode is the straight man to all Silva's shenanigans, and Adolfo Celi nearly outdoes Silva in the hard-case gangster role, especially at near the end where the demented Mario finally confronts him. It's Mario Adorf that steals the show here as the clueless, but not helpless, Mario, as he jumps from being a flawed but caring father to a man who has been pushed about as far as someone can be.Although the first half sets up all the characters and has a punch up or two, the film gradually gets more and more violent as you would expect, and of course it's standard practice to throw in a car chase too. This one goes from a car chase to a foot chase and even has Mario smashing his head through a windscreen in order to get at a gangster. From then it's non-stop until the gunfight in the scrapyard. Funky soundtrack too. Loud, with it.

Masterful genre Director, Fernando Di Leo mines euro crime gold with 'La Mala Ordina', which proves to be yet another a satisfying, full bore actioner with everyone's favourite concrete-haired heavy, Henry Silva teaming up with the towering, Woody Strode as two quick-fisted, slow- witted NY hoods whose demonstrative presence amongst the Italian underworld engenders a deadly schism betwixt the two rival factions; the Italian contingent bristling in vociferous indignation as the arrogant, Silva and Strode throw their considerable cumulative weight around. And it has to be said that, Armando Trovajoli's grittier than gunpowder crime funk score is a break heavy delight; a veritable phat bass'd motherlode for beat junkies and audiophiles alike.

Hearty, but tough and resourceful small-time pimp Luca Canali (an excellent performance by Mario Adorf) gets framed as a fall guy by the flinty, ruthless Don Vito Tressoldi (superbly played by Adolfo Celi) for the disappearance of a shipment of heroin. Tressoldi hires volatile hit-man Dave Catania (a splendidly slimy Henry Silva) and his more low-key partner Frank Webster (the always formidable Woody Strode) to rub Luca out, but Luca proves to be a surprisingly worthy adversary who vows revenge on the mob after they kill his wife and daughter. Director/co-writer Fernando Di Leo delivers an exceptionally fierce, gripping, and stirring crime yarn that benefits substantially from a hard, gritty, no-nonsense tone, shocking outbursts of ugly and savage violence, a constant snappy pace, a generous sprinkling of tasty female nudity, and a positively ferocious take-no-prisoners attitude. Better still, there's no needless filler or silly humor to detract from the jolting harshness of the taut and arresting narrative. The uniformly sound acting from a top-drawer cast rates as another major asset: Adorf makes for a likable anti-hero and redoubtable brute force of nature as Luca, Celi totally oozes as the treacherous Don Vito, Silva and Strode as utterly convincing as a pair of very dangerous and threatening dudes, Luciana Paluzzi adds class as elegant escort Eva Lalli, and Femi Benussi acquits herself well in a sizable supporting part as whiny hooker Nana. Franco Villa's polished cinematography makes nice occasional use of tilted camera angles and whiplash pans. Armando Trovajoli's funky, jazzy, syncopated score likewise hits the spot. The climactic shoot-out in a junkyard is simply fantastic. Well worth seeing.

"La Mala Ordina" (1972) ranks as a brutal, violent, no-holds-barred, urban crime thriller from Italian director Fernando Di Leo. New York mafia kingpin Corso ("The Day of the Jackal" gunsmith Cyril Cusack) dispatches two laconic, no-nonsense torpedoes, Dave (Henry Silva of "Johnny Cool") and Frank (Woody Strode of "The Professionals"), to Milan to knock off Luca Canali (a heavily mustached Mario Adorf of "Fedora"), an inconsequential pimp who has been framed by the Milan mafia for stealing heroin from New York. The likable Luca is surprised when he discovers that two Americans are hunting him down. Talk about an underdog hero who uses his head, in one scene, our outraged protagonist head butts a telephone and shatters it. Meanwhile, Dave and Frank seem to be loitering around Milan with a pretty tour guide Eva Lalli ("Thunderball" bad girl Luciana Paluzzi) who doesn't seem to realize how notorious her two charges are. Rough stuff galore follows in what is a generally comprehensible, hard-knuckled Mafioso melodrama. Top Milan Mafia chieftain Don Vito (another "Thunderball" alumnus Adolfo Celi) wants his henchmen to capture Luca before the Americans can collar him. Writer & director Di Leo puts his hero through the ringer. Poor Luca watches in shock as his estranged wife Lucia (Sylva Koscina of "Hornet's Nest") and their daughter are run over by a madman in a mini-van. The grief-stricken but revengeful Luca chases the fiend down and leaps onto the front of the mini-van. Di Leo pay-offs two scenes that foreshadow Luca's use of head butting his opponents and a telephone, and Luca head butts his way through the driver's windshield and into the driver's seat. The showdown in a junk car lot is just as terrific. Look for lots of nudity, too. Don Vito's gunsels get their hands on one of Luca's squeezes and try to tear off her nipples during a nasty interrogation scene. Neither Koscina nor Paluzzi are used as anything but sex objects. Interestingly, Koscina and Paluzzi are struck and killed by cars. Fans of raw-edged Italian crime dramas will enjoy this opus.