The provocative Italian filmmaker Elio Petri?s most internationally acclaimed work is this remarkable, visceral, Oscar-winning thriller. Petri maintains a tricky balance between absurdity and realism in telling the Kafkaes... more »que tale of a Roman police inspector (A Fistful of Dollars?s Gian Maria Volonté, in a commanding performance) investigating a heinous crime?which he committed himself. Both a penetrating character study and a disturbing commentary on the draconian crackdowns by the Italian government in the late 1960s and early ?70s, Petri?s kinetic portrait of surreal bureaucracy is a perversely pleasurable rendering of controlled chaos.« less