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RaroVideo USA recently made a many an American Poliziotteschi fan happy by issu­ing a box set of Fernando Di Leo’s clas­sic films in this genre.  If you’re won­der­ing what they might do for an encore, the answer recently arrived with an impres­sive disc of Ruggero Deodato’s Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man.  Like the Di Leo set, it’s a skill­fully pack­aged item that presents its main attrac­tion well and doesn’t skimp on the extras.

The good stuff begins with a new anamor­phic HD trans­fer of the film: it retains its vin­tage film look but puts it across with a rich­ness in detail and color (wait until you see how the bright red blood pops on the image).  Both English and Italian sound­tracks are pro­vided, with crisp English sub­ti­tles for the lat­ter.  The Italian track is the bet­ter choice here but both are easy on the ears.

There are also a few choice extras here for the Poliziotteschi con­nois­seur.  The first is a 42-minute doc­u­men­tary on the make of the film enti­tled Poliziotteschi Violenti and it fea­tures inter­views with Deodato, star Ray Lovelock and some pro­duc­tion per­son­nel.  It uses its expan­sive run­ning time well, with Deodato and Lovelock tak­ing the lead as they dis­cuss the film in great detail.  You’ll find out about Deodato’s early direct­ing career, how he shot the infa­mously wild open­ing chase sequence, how the two leads got along and some sur­pris­ingly per­sonal obser­va­tions about the Dionisio sis­ters (Silvia and Sofia) who starred in the film.  Al Cliver also pops up briefly to rue­fully dis­cuss why he turned down one of the lead­ing roles.  It’s a lively, infor­ma­tive piece and it gets bonus points for a charm­ing coda where Lovelock breaks out a gui­tar to play his theme song for the film.

The other major extra is a reel of Deodato’s tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials, which is accom­pa­nied by a voiceover track in Italian with sub­ti­tles from the direc­tor.  He dis­cusses the nature of work­ing on com­mer­cials in Italy, how he made his fel­low film­mak­ers envi­ous with his abil­ity to segue back and forth between the com­mer­cial and fea­ture film worlds and some inci­den­tal sto­ries about the dif­fer­ent com­mer­cials.  Along the way, it shows a fas­ci­nat­ing other side of this film­maker that might not be seen by peo­ple who just know for mak­ing Cannibal Holocaust.

The pack­age is rounded out by a liner notes book­let that includes a brief essay on the film as well as a Deodato fil­mog­ra­phy.  All in all, this is a qual­ity release and a great way for American fans to enjoy a vin­tage, deserv­ing Poliziotteschi entry.  One can only hope that RaroVideo USA will con­tinue to release more films in this underexplored-on-U.S.-video genre.

A TRAILER (WARNING, NSFW):

Live Like a cop, Die Like a man directed by Ruggero Deodato from Rarovideousa on Vimeo.