In a performance finer than required, an apelike Martin Balsam (Psycho) stars as unscrupulous police commissario Bonavia in Confessions of a Police Captain, a Eurocrime effort better known to denizens of the wonderful world of bargain-bin DVD collections as Bad Cop I. The renaming forces a nonexistent connection to Bad Cop II, which is actually 1983’s unrelated Corrupt. Got that?
Get this: Bonavia gets into hot water when he orders the release of mental patient, knowing the kook will go try to kill a crooked construction company owner. The loony tries and fails, thus opening up a whole can of worms for our cap’n — so much so that he may end up in prison, where he would risk having his food gets spat in and/or his tummy getting shivved during movie time.
Directed and co-written by Amityville II: The Possession’s Damiano Damiani, Confessions makes for a pretty competent policier, although its surplus of characters eventually wears the viewer thin. The film is very ’70s and very Italian, which is exactly what I liked about it. Sometimes incongruity — e.g. a disturbing ending against a swanky Riz Ortolani score — just works. —Rod Lott