The Cop in Blue Jeans (1976)

A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Left breathless by Live by a Cop,Die Like a Man,I started looking for other Italian Crime (IC) films to watch for the 1976 poll on ICM. Starring in the first IC I saw (Almost Human) I was excited to find a Tomas Milian IC title from the year,which led to me buying some blue jeans.The plot:Spending years as a member of the underworld, Nico Giraldi turns his back on crime,and enters the police force. Aware of his time in the underworld,the Giraldi's fellow officers keep a close watch,and give him and his blue jeans the task of catching a gang of purse snatchers. Catching one of the thieves,Giraldi opens a purse to the criminal underworld. View on the film:Roaring into life with toe-tapping theme music for Giraldi by Guido De Angelis and Maurizio De Angelis, co-writer/(with Mario Amendola) director Bruno Corbucci & cinematographer Sebastiano Celeste kick off with a thrilling blend of Italian Crime and Action Comedy,with scatter-gun tracking shots giving Giraldi motorbike chases a frantic atmosphere,and a use of multiple different types of props for the street fights giving them an Action Comedy slickness. Filming parts of it at an airport and a big football match, Corbucci gets Giraldi's blue jeans dirty via extended crane shots sweeping across the streets and catching the decay of Italian Crime that Giraldi is fighting against.Cheekily naming Giraldi's pet rat Serpico and having posters of the film on his bedroom wall (!),the screenplay by Corbucci and Amendola thread their Italian Crime jeans with a wonderfully quirky vibe, via making Giraldi a bohemian,whose time spent on the other side of the law gives him a quick-wit to outsmart the new league of gangsters. Starting Giraldi's investigation at a petty crime level,the writers smoothly peel away at every level of the underworld, leading to Giraldi opening the purse of the top gangster in the city. Jumping with joy in his hippy clothes, Tomas Milian gives a fantastic performance as Giraldi,thanks to Milian weaving the rogue charm of the Italian Crime outlaw with an eye-catching quirky manner for the cop in blue jeans.

Surprisingly engaging poliziottesco spoof which actually led to a series, all featuring star Tomas Milian as maverick cop Nico Giraldi; in fact, a total of 11 films were made between 1976 and 1984! I know a few of them turned up on Italian TV as a kid but I had always considered them - and Milian's other contemporaneous series revolving around a character nicknamed "Monnezza" (Italian slang for "garbage"), but which lasted for only 3 'episodes' - low-brow, indeed bottom-of-the-barrel, stuff; considering that their titles - and I'm sure plot lines - were basically interchangeable certainly makes their longevity astounding! Well, action-packed though it is - with the star (playing a street-wise ex-delinquent dressed as a bum with a mouse, Serpico, for a pet!) going through many a stunt on a motor-bike - the film's most prominent trait is its vulgarity which doesn't merely extend to a proliferation of colorful swearwords; indeed, the very first scene shows a chubby young man mooning a group of Japanese tourists from across the street, in order to distract them while his accomplices make off with their luggage in a van! As such, the film is enjoyable in an unassuming way - though the muddy soundtrack and the characters' frequent resort to the use of dialect made the dialogue a bit of a chore to understand, even for one who's fluent in the language like myself! - and it's certainly made even more tolerable by the presence of a predictably ruthless Jack Palance (whose real identity proves quite a revelation!).The finale, then, is at once amusing and clever in that Milian - assigned to a special squad dealing with "snatch & grab" cases, hence the original title SQUADRA ANTISCIPPO - resorts to just such a crime in order to help his lovely girlfriend, whose job it is to smuggle provocative literature into the country!; they had met when Milian saved the girl from being raped: keeping her watch and other valuables in her bra, he wonders what she'd say if someone asked her the time, perhaps "a quarter to tits"?! P.S. at one point, Milian says "La Polizia Ringrazia" (The Police Is Thankful) - which happens to be the title of the 1972 film (released in the U.S. as EXECUTION SQUAD) credited with kick-starting the whole poliziottesco subgenre!

Ah, Record Explosion in NYC has granted me the privilege of watching this incredible piece of cinematic forte. OK, maybe not, but it was only $4.This entertaining yarn mostly lets Nico show what he does best: catching baddies with street finesse. Tomas Milian (credited on the box as Tunas Milian) portrays a hardcore street tough turned on the good side of the law pretty well. Laughs a plenty with his pimping scene in the disco club. I believe there are 9 total motorcycle jumps and most are unnecessary and where where the ramps?? See Nico mistreat a gal who ends up coming back for more; despite his insisting on not changing his socks. And his jeans are clearly black, not blue!!On the cover of the box is Jack Palance visage surrounded by dollar bills and is credited as starring in this. I think it should have said "Showing up on camera when the booze ran out". Jack mostly scowls and doesn't do any of the dirty work (he didn't get paid enough for it). Like in his other classic Outlaw of Gor, Jack shows up early on, then goes from bar to bar then reappears one hour and 12 minutes into it to pick up his paycheck. He really deserves a quick knee to the nether region.

Here we have the rude, ill-mannered and unkempt Nicola Giraldi (Tomas Milian), a Roman policeman forced to hunt a band of senseless pickpocketers and thefts in the outskirts of Rome.But when an American boss begins to mysteriously kill this young criminals one after another, Giraldi shows his exceptional inspection abilities.Strange and entertaining movie, that starts like a rough comedy and turns into a serious police movie.See it.