AllMovie

This interesting crime film, based on a book by Giorgio Scerbanenci, deals with the search for an adult who pushed a classroom full of troubled teens to gang-rape and murder their female teacher. A hard-bitten Police Inspector named Liberti (Pier Paolo Capponi) is put on the case and sets about brutally interrogating the young punks. He finally settles on a blond Slav named Fiorello Grassi as the one most likely to squeal, but when Grassi jumps (or is pushed) from a rooftop, Liberti knows there is more to the teacher's murder than meets the eye. He and pretty social-worker Livia (Nieves Navarro) manage to move one of the other boys in with them, hoping to earn his trust so he will talk. The usual seriocomic urchin-taming scenes follow, but Liberti and Livia finally earn the boys' trust, learning surprising details about an older woman and a diamond-smuggling operation before finding out the sordid truth. Capponi is outstanding in the lead, and Franco Villa's photography is noteworthy, particularly in the hallucinatory montage re-creating the horrible crime. Well-acted and nicely paced, DiLeo's film suffers from its predictable denouement, but is otherwise quite good.