‘Free Hand for a Tough Cop’ or — The Dirty (Half) Dozen?

It starts with a gag. Cowboys ride across the screen with Monument Valley’s rock formations towering in the background. But hang on! Isn’t this a poliziotteschi? A gritty Italian crime thriller? Then the camera then pulls back to reveal a “modern day” prison where the inmates are watching a Western and complaining about the movie. We’ve been tricked!

Now if this sort of unsubtle silliness isn’t your thing then switch the film off right now because Umberto Lenzi’s ‘Free Hand for a Tough Cop’ (1976) is nothing but unsubtle silliness to the point that there’s no room left for anything else such as taste, nuance or depth. Indeed, if nuance or depth popped up in this movie they’d immediately be shot at, hit with a brick or told to “fuck off!”. And rightly so ‘Free Hand for a Tough Cop’ is typical stripped back, high-octane Lenzi idiocy. And it’s awesome!

The daughter of a wealthy family has been kidnapped and the kidnappers, led by the evil Brescianelli (Henry Silva), have demanded an outrageously large ransom. However, the D.A. has refused to let the family pay up which means the little girl will be killed when time runs out in only a few days. Not only that but the little girl has kidney problems which means she’s going to die unless she is given urgent medical attention. Not only that but the kidnappers have decided to kill her anyway because you know, why not?

And so it’s up to Inspector Sarti (Claudio Cassinelli) to operate outside the law, and common sense, in order to save the little girl in time before she dies of… well, of any of a number of horrific and horrible reasons but you certainly can’t say this movie doesn’t have stakes! To track down the little girl Sarti busts low-life criminal Monnezza (aka ‘Garbage Can’ played by Tomas Millian) out of prison to help him put together a squad made up of the underworld’s most vicious thugs to track down and stop Brescianelli.

But, hang on! Why does Sarti, a POLICE INSPECTOR, have to break Monnezza out of prison rather than just requesting his release through the usual channels? Because there’s a girl with kidney problems to be saved god damn it, and he’s a tough cop with a free hand! And when I say “free” I mean FREE as Inspector Sarti and his gang of criminals commit every crime in the book, and plenty of others that should subsequently be included, to save the kid. This means idiocy reigns supreme.

‘Free Hand for a Tough Cop’ is fantastic. The plot is so simple it allows everything else to rocket along at break-neck speed, something which the film deliberately exploits to the max. You can almost feel the movie asking the audience — “ Okay, how daft/silly/excessive/offensive/stupid/ridiculous do you think the next bit is going to be?” I took the bait big time, sitting there thinking “Well, it could be this daft or that stup… oh, no, it’s even more sillier than I could’ve imagined”.

However, what this meant was that I was completely and utterly engaged with the movie and for the entire run-time the external world ceased to exist. And I love it when that happens.

The film also plays fast and loose with genres tropes and conventions to the point it’s often a satirical pastiche of poliziotteschi (at one point a couple exit a cinema showing an Italian cop film and we hear the woman wondering why the movies have to be so violent along with, almost, Lenzi giggling away behind the camera). This, along with a dizzyingly break-neck pace, means ‘Free Hand for a Tough Cop’ is a constantly head-spinning experience because we’re not just being hit with idiocy but subverted idiocy at that and at an insanely high rate of knots. And I haven’t even mentioned the car chases, shoot-outs, robberies and fist-fights.

Not that there isn’t room for some subtlety. There’s one scene where Sarti and Monnezza must interrogate a drug dealer who knows Brescianelli’s whereabouts. However, the dealer is (again) in jail but rather than (again) following the rules Sarti and Monnezza dress up as decorators who have been ordered to re-paint the police offices. It was only after a minute or so that I noticed Sarti’s hat was made out of newspaper meaning it was obvious that he and Monnezza had only just come up with their plan literally minutes before hand and so didn’t even have time to make proper costumes. It’s a really nice little touch in an already entertaining movie and is a good representation of just how quickly everything is moving along here.

‘Free Hand for a Tough Cop’ is an excellent example of what makes Umberto Lenzi’s best films such a blast to watch and that’s unbridled daftness combined with an extremely allergic reaction to anything that could slow the film down in anyway whatsoever — jettison everything and anything that’s not providing or contributing to maximum entertainment.

So if rampant idiocy isn’t your thing then ‘Free Hand for a Tough Cop’ might not be for you. Personally speaking rampant idiocy is, by far, my favourite form of idiocy so I loved every single second.