Romanzo criminale(Directed by Michele Placido; 2005; Italy/UK/France/US)
I went to see this film because a) I'd heard absolutley nothing about it until a few days ago, b) I was surprised to find it showing not only at my local arthouse, but the mainstream (it's Italian, with subtitles), and c) regardless of expectations, I felt it was my duty, since nobody else has mentioned it around here, to see it and report back with findings... it has, after all, been a while since we've had a new gangster film (other than
The Departed).
I report back with glowing reference. This is what I wrote in my film database entry:
In 1970s, three childhood friends decide to take over Rome's underworld, and are undone by their own ambition and greed.
It sounds like familiar stuff, and for the most part it is, but this epic film, full of dingy, washed-out settings and brilliant acting, has a drive and sustained energy which must be admired, given its two-and-a-half hour running time. It isn't as romanticised as, for example, the Sicilian scenes from The Godfather Part II, which works in its favour, and the music, a mixture between American funk records and an original, composed score, lends it a weight it would otherwise be void of. If anything, it could have been even longer, with deeper delves into these characters who find themselves, in the course of the film, at the mercy of the ebb and flow of likeable and expendable.
I gave it one star, which means "good, recommended". It's based on a bestselling Italian novel of the same name, which was in turn a fictionalisation of real events which happened in 1970s Rome. If my aesthetic tastes have moved on (note, moved
on, not above) since
The Godfather, I would still recommend that as many members here as possible catch this.
I would be notably interested in seeing what Turnbull, RRA, Vercetti, JG and SC made of it.
