The plot seem to have been written as a reaction to the terrible problem with terrorism and violence which culminated in Italy during this period. There's much stilted dialogue about the incapability of putting the riff-raff away once and for all ("There's only one way to deal with them. Put'em against the wall!"). The discontent and the fear of the citizens takes up a large part of the plot. And as always everything is black and white, good guys and bad guys and some pretty women in between. As a document of its time the film say a lot perhaps, although it's not very interesting, but it tells us more about the state of the contemporary Italian film industry. The crime genre coincidentally also reached its peak in 1976 and all sorts of incredibly cheap films were strained out under hilarious production conditions and immediately spread around the world to satisfy the audience's hunger for more. Violence For Kicks is so typical of this, but it would probably never even get a video release today. The sloppy car-chases have been sped up in editing, the continuity is almost non-existing, the dubbing sounds like something you'd expect in a cartoon and the photography is bleak and unsteady. And, best of all, the acting is touchingly poor in places. Wonderfully stiff old guys in trenchcoates walking to their spots, delivering their cliché of a line with a straight face (clearly reading off cue-cards) and then stepping back again. It's amateurish low-budget exploitation at its most evident. A piece of crap, frankly. There's a neat karate-fight in the middle, though.

© The Inzomniac's Movie Madness Review.