The Cynic the Rat and the Fist

A good place to start if you’ve never seen one of the “poliziotteschi” films popular in Italy in the 1970s, The Cynic, the Rat and the Fist (Il Cinico, l’Infame, il Violento) is one of a series of movies actor Maurizio Merli made with director Umberto Lenzi, both leading lights of the genre that took over when spaghetti westerns lost their box-office allure. The action is set during the so-called “years of lead” of political turmoil in taly and centres on Inspector Leonardo Tanzi (Merli), a decent cop who handed in his badge in the previous outing for Merli and Lenzi, The Tough Ones. But his life as an everyday freelance sword of … Read more