Poliziotteschi

The films generally featured graphic and brutal violence, organized crime, car chases, vigilantism, heists, gunfights, and corruption up to the highest levels.

In English, the term poliziottesco (a fusion of the words poliziotto ("policeman") and the same -esco suffix) has prevailed over the more syntactically correct poliziesco all'italiana to indicate 1970s-era Italian-produced "tough cop" and crime movies.

In both instances, however, the term that has come to be used more frequently by English-speaking fans of the genre (poliziotteschi, spaghetti Westerns) was originally used pejoratively by critics, to denigrate the films themselves and their makers.

[3][4][5][6][7] Due in part to the genre's often ostensibly negative portrayal of political activists and militants, especially leftist militants, and its seeming endorsement of vigilantism and "tough-on-crime" or "law and order" stances, some poliziotteschi films (such as 1976's The Big Racket) were criticized by then-contemporaneous critics and accused of exploiting conservative fears of rising crime and political upheaval while containing reactionary, pro-violence, or even quasi-Fascist ideological elements in their overarching message.

[3][4] According to Bondarella, the "classic" poliziotteschi film reveals "almost universal suspicion of the very social institutions charged with protecting Italian society from criminal violence".

[6] With directors such as Fernando Di Leo and Umberto Lenzi and actors such as Maurizio Merli and Tomas Milian, poliziotteschi films became popular in the mid-1970s after the decline of Spaghetti Westerns and Eurospy genres.

Screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti, who was unhappy with what he deemed the genre's "fascistic" undertones, credits himself for "destroying it from the inside", by making it evolve into self-parody.