Copkiller

Copkiller
Directed by	Roberto Faenza
Produced by	Elda Ferri Roberto Cicutto
Screenplay by	Ennio De Concini Roberto Faenza Hugh Fleetwood
Based on	The Order of Death by Hugh Fleetwood
Starring	Harvey Keitel John Lydon Sylvia Sidney Leonard Mann Nicole Garcia
Music by	Ennio Morricone
Studio	Jean Vigo International RAI Aura Film
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date(s)	15 March 1983 (Italy)
Running time	117 min.
Country	Italy

Copkiller (also known as Corrupt and The Order of Death) is a 1983 Italian crime thriller film directed by Roberto Faenza and starring Harvey Keitel and John Lydon (also known as Johnny Rotten from The Sex Pistols). It was adapted from Hugh Fleetwood's novel The Order of Death, which was set to be the original title of the production. Fleetwood also wrote the screenplay in cooperation with Faenza and Ennio De Concini. The music was composed by Ennio Morricone. According to IMDb it was filmed in 1981, and released in USA in 1984. It was Lydon's only starring role in film to date.

Plot synopsis

Lieutenant Fred O'Connor (Keitel) and his partner the police officer Bob Carvo (Mann) are a pair of corrupt cops, who have spent their illegal earnings on an uptown New York City flat. A friction starts between them, as Carvo feels guilty about their scams and wants to abandon their society. At the same time, the police force of the city is trying to catch a serial killer who has chosen policemen as targets. A very disturbed youngster called Leo Smith (Lydon) arrives at O'Connor's door and convinces him that he's the notorious "copkiller" and is responsible for a continued killing spree. O'Connor kidnaps Smith and starts to think how to murder him, but when Carvo appears and finds out about Smith, they struggle and O'Connor accidentally kills Carvo instead. He decides to make Smith his accomplice in the crime, and after that Smith becomes a permanent "guest" inside O'Connor's apartment, with no indication of a change in the strange situation. O'Connor starts to feel the guilt over his actions, while at the same time he gets closer to Carvo's widow, Lenore (Garcia), shifting from interested friend to romantic interest. A bizarre cat-and-mouse game develops between O'Connor and Smith, with the first trying to direct the course of O'Connor's actions to prevent any more inquiries on Carvo's death, and the latter investigating if his enigmatic cohabitant is the real cop killer. The mind game contorts until the one-upmanship reaches a climatic end.

Cast

• Harvey Keitel ... Lt. Fred O'Connor
• John Lydon ... Leo Smith
• Nicole Garcia ... Lenore Carvo
• Leonard Mann ... Bob Carvo
• Sylvia Sidney ... Margaret Smith
• Carla Romanelli
• Nicola Cancellaro
• Ettore Venturini
• Antonio D'Acquisto
• Benedetto Sestili
• Giorgio Lucenti
• Angelo Cecchetti

Release

The premiere in Italy was in March 15, 1983. Since then, this rarely seen has become part of the public domain. Since there is no true owner of the footage, scores of bad-quality copies are floating around the market. Some few legitimate copies of the film were released in a mid-eighties VHS by Thorn EMI Screen Entertainment under the title Corrupt. Several imprints with the title Cop Killer or Copkiller are poorly made transfers and there has been no official DVD release either; most of the copies in this format are badly edited and sourced from the same VHS that came out in the '80s.

The film is marketed under various titles, including The Order of Death or Order of Death (mostly in the United Kingdom), Corrupt in USA, Cop Killer or Cop Killers in Europe, Bad Cop Chronicles #2 (from the VHS sleeve) and Corrupt Lieutenant. The latter was devised after 1992 to capitalize on Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant, a later, critically acclaimed film also featuring Harvey Keitel.

Reception

Copkiller was reviewed on BBC 1's Film 83 as Order of Death. Well known British film critic Barry Norman refers to Lydon's voice as a “speak-your-weight machine", and sums up by calling the movie "stupid".

In the book Harvey Keitel Movie Top Ten edited by Creation Books (1999) and compiled by film author Jack Hunter, featuring his personal Top Ten of Harvey's best films or performances, there is a chapter dedicated to Copkiller. The chapter is written by film critic David Prothero, who calls Copkiller "Undoubtedly one of Kietel's finest films". Prothero makes the link between Keitel's character in the film and his character in Bad Lieutenant. Another comparison he brings is the parallel relation between Copkiller and Lydon's role with the one in the film Performance and Mick Jagger; Prothero describes the blurring of Lydon's stage persona with his onscreen character, stating that defining proofs about this hypothesis are Leo Smith's tantrums ala Johnny Rotten, his mixture of arrogance and cynicism and the fact that Lydon wears his own clothes throughout the film.

Influence

Harvey Keitel plays a corrupt cop that can be wieved as a prototype of his future character in the cult classic film Bad Lieutenant, because of their similar personalities.

Public Image Ltd

John Lydon's pop group Public Image Ltd was supposed to score the soundtrack for the film and worked on the material with his band mates Keith Levene and Martin Atkins (over the phone, by long distance).

In early November 1982 PiL announced the imminent release of a new single Blue Water and a six-track mini album You Are Now Entering A Commercial Zone on their new label, which was supposed to release the unused music for Copkiller. This did not happen, with the band instead continuing to record a full-length album at South Park Studios.

In mid-1983 in PiL's absence, Keith Levene took the unfinished album tapes and did his own mix. He then flew over to London and presented them to Richard Branson as the finished new PiL album for Virgin Records: Commercial Zone. For his part, John Lydon decided to completely abandon the tapes and re-record the whole album from scratch with session musicians. This new version of Commercial Zone became This Is What You Want... This Is What You Get in 1984.

The classic New Wave song The Order of Death from This Is What You Want... This Is What You Get is a reference to the film. The line "This is what you want... This is what you get", which gives his title to the album, appears in The Order of Death.

External links

• Copkiller at the Internet Movie Database
• Copkiller at AllRovi
• Copkiller at Rotten Tomatoes