Rome Armed to the Teeth

The Tough Ones (, lit. "Rome at gunpoint", also known as Rome, Armed to the Teeth) is a 1976 Italian poliziottesco film directed by Umberto Lenzi and first entry into the Tanzi/Moretto/Monnezza shared universe . Plot Inspector Leonardo Tanzi, the head of the anti-gang squad of the Roman branch of the Italian State Police, is pursuing Emmanuel Dominique Ferrender, a French gangster who holds a monopoly on criminal activity within Rome. A raid at a casino that Ferrender is reported to operate proves fruitless until Savelli, a one-armed criminal with ties to Ferrender, walks by the establishment. Tanzi and his partner, Inspector Francesco Caputo, arrest Savelli but are forced to release him without charge; he later kills a guard during a bank robbery. To find Savelli, Tanzi and another colleague, Poliani, question Savelli's hunchbacked brother-in-law Vincenzo Moretto during his work at a slaughterhouse, but he refuses to cooperate. To arrest him, Tanzi plants drugs in Moretto's Porsche, allowing him and Poliani to interrogate him, where he still refuses to answer their questions. While using the bathroom, Moretto cuts his wrist using his watch's armband, requiring him to be hospitalized; fearing a public scandal concerning police brutality, Vice-Commissioner Ruini has Moretto released without charge and transfers Tanzi to the licenses and permits department. Three of Moretto's friends avenge him by kidnapping Tanzi's girlfriend Anna, a juvenile court magistrate, and take her to a junkyard, where they intimidate her by pretending to leave her to be crushed to death by the machinery and give her a bullet to present to Tanzi as a warning. Traumatized, Anna is unable to identify the culprits to Tazni, but he realizes Moretto's involvement due to the bullet and confronts him, ordering to swallow the bullet in a show of force. Sometime later, Tanzi helps Caputo exhume a decaying body found in Castelfusano, which he suspects is connected to Ferrender.