Verdict
Summary
Nihilistic and shocking, Young, Violent, Dangerous took on more layers as it went on, but for awhile there I didn’t see any point in it at all. Watching these guys kill people in cold blood and laugh about it was pretty chilling, and when they take the female hostage, the film become more complex as it sort of makes her the eyes of the audience as she becomes the witness and the hostage, completely innocent as she is forced into their downhill odyssey. When the film ends, it was a relief, but also quite perfectly in that it finally takes a sigh of sorrow and anguish, left alone to grieve what came before.
Plot:
Three young men go on a violent crime rampage.
Review:
With no reason to, three attractive, well-off and well-bred friends – Mario (Stafano Patrizi), Giovanni (Benjamin Lev), and Luigi (Max Delys) – decide that today is the day they’re going to throw all caution to the wind and commit crimes. They rob a convenience store and shoot several people dead, which starts their day off with a bang. Laughing and relishing the shot of adrenaline they feel, they escalate their tour by robbing a bank next, which ends in the murder of the bank manager. It doesn’t take long at all for the police to pick up their trail, and the commissioner (Tomas Milian) is able to figure out who these three joy riders are. He rounds up their parents, sits them down and asks what they did wrong to raise three monsters. In complete denial, the parents can’t believe this is possible, and the commissioner bluntly tells them all that he’s going to kill their kids if they don’t surrender. The three “young, violent, and dangerous” young men keep going: They make a huge scene at a grocery store where they rob the cashiers and shoot the place up, killing more people, including three other criminals they pick up along the way. Murder comes very easily to them. They hole up at one of their sister’s house, and she’s shocked to find that her brother Giovanni is involved in all this mayhem. His sister Lea (Eleonora Giorgi) watches the guys rape and torture two other women, and they take her with them as a hostage. Things become deadly after that when the cops pick up their trail, leading to a nail-biting car chase through Rome, and when the guys escape and try heading for Switzerland, the game is on with a do-or-die sprint to the border.
Nihilistic and shocking, Young, Violent, Dangerous took on more layers as it went on, but for awhile there I didn’t see any point in it at all. Watching these guys kill people in cold blood and laugh about it was pretty chilling, and when they take the female hostage, the film become more complex as it sort of makes her the eyes of the audience as she becomes the witness and the hostage, completely innocent as she is forced into their downhill odyssey. When the film ends, it was a relief, but also quite perfectly in that it finally takes a sigh of sorrow and anguish, left alone to grieve what came before. Directed by Romolo Guerrieri, and co-written by Fernando Di Leo.
Raro Video’s new Blu-ray of Young, Violent, Dangerous is presented in high definition, looking and sounding completely satisfactory, and comes with an archival documentary, an audio commentary, and an alternate English language track.
