LIVE LIKE A COP, DIE LIKE A MAN: Shoot First, Poke Fun Later

When action fare started to dry up at the U.S. mul­ti­plexes dur­ing the mid-1990’s, cult movie fans who loved the genre began look­ing to other coun­tries and past eras for new bullet-infused thrills.  At first, it was Hong Kong action of the John Woo vari­ety that revved up cult fan’s engines.  However, another type of action began to be explored around this time on a more under­ground level: the Italian crime flick, also known as the Poliziotteschi.  This sub­genre took its cues from tough American films like Dirty Harry, The French Connection and Death Wish and pumped them up with a melo­dra­matic, go-for-broke inten­sity that is dis­tinctly Italian.

Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man is a pop­u­lar entry in the genre with Poliziotteschi fans because it lives up to the genre’s promise of hard-hitting thrills.  It’s aes­thetic is laid out neatly in an open­ing sequence where a pair of motor­cy­cle thugs snatch a women’s purse and drag her to her death (said bag is chained to her wrist).  She smacks head-first into a curb and is given a few kicks to the face for good mea­sure.  Tough yet oddly boy­ish cops Fred (Marc Porel) and Tony (Ray Lovelock) fol­low this duo on a pair of bikes, lead­ing to an orgias­tic chase that mixes wild stunts with slap­stick ele­ments.  When they catch the crooks, Fred and Tony make sure they’re dead before the beat cops arrive.

This bru­tal and absurd yet oper­atic sequence sets the tone for the rest of the film.  The main thrust of the plot involves Fred and Tony try­ing to get to a vicious crime boss Bibi (Renato Salvatori) after his men shoot down one of their fel­low offi­cers.  They work their way towards forc­ing him out of the wood­work by attack­ing his men and his oper­a­tions.  They also deal with one-off crime sit­u­a­tions like roust­ing a group of mur­der­ous hostage-takers.  The episodic plot also makes room for humor, like their deal­ings with their depressed boss (Adolfo Celi) and their absurdly sex­ist flir­ta­tions with the boss’s sec­re­tary (Silvia Dionisio).

By the time Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man hit movie screens in Italy, the style, con­tent and req­ui­site story beats of the Poliziotteschi genre had all coa­lesced into a reli­able for­mula.  However, this film is unique in the genre because it sub­scribes to some ele­ments while reject­ing or pok­ing fun at oth­ers.  There’s plenty of action, most of it bru­tal, but the usual ele­ments of heart-tugging drama or tragedy are pretty much thrown out.

The unusual touch here is the humor: the child-like slap­stick antics of Fred and Tony in non-action scenes often play like a Neapolitan-flavored ver­sion of Freebie And The Bean.  There’s a sense that the cops’ work is all so much tough-guy fool­ish­ness (the coda of the film is not unlike the end­ing of a Bugs Bunny car­toon).  It’s also the rare Poliziotteschi film where women are allowed to have the upper hand in their face-offs with the heroes.  For exam­ple, the heroes are soundly argued down by Dionisio in the scenes where they come on to her and her dia­logue has a philo­soph­i­cally mature, intel­lec­tual tone that leaves them dumb­founded.  Even bet­ter is a scene where they try to rough up Bibi’s lit­tle sis­ter Lina (played by Dionisio’s sis­ter, Sofia) only for her to end up seduc­ing them both!

That said, the most sur­pris­ing ele­ment of this film might be its choice of direc­tor: Ruggero Deodato would soon become known for button-pushing hor­ror fare like Cannibal Holocaust and House At The Edge Of The Park. Fans will be happy to note that he toys with audi­ence expec­ta­tions as much as he does in his hor­ror work, albeit in a more light­hearted way.  He also doesn’t shy away from the nec­es­sary rough­ness of the action sequences: in addi­tion to the afore­men­tioned motor­cy­cle scene, he also turns in strong work dur­ing the hostage sce­nario sequence.  It’s a mar­vel of peo­ple get­ting smacked around, close-ups of sweaty faces and lots of yelling.

Simply put, Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man works as both a genre entry and a sly sendup of its own genre.  If you want a straight­for­ward exam­ple of the Poliziotteschi, you should prob­a­bly start with Street Law or Almost Human — but it you want to see a film­maker have fun with the genre’s car­toon­ish excesses while still deliv­er­ing the goods, this is your film.

A TRAILER (WARNING, NSFW):

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