Reviews

I'm surprised at all the negative comments because I really enjoyed this cross between a sci-fi thriller and a road movie.

Sure, there's not a lot of CGI, and it probably moves kind of slowly for the multiplex crowd, but there's nothing wrong with that. I found it really refreshing to see a film without explosions or people doing backward somersaults in slow-motion.

The film deals with a largely unspecified menace, and that's the key to understanding it. There's no-one to fight against, there's no chance of heroics, there's no way to react to what you don't know or understand. Instead, the characters actually *grow* and do small, touching things for each other, as you suspect people would when faced with an incomprehensible peril. Occasionally, fear drives them to being the exact opposite.

It is these small, well observed details that make this such a great movie.

The "camorra" is the Neapolitan equivalent to the Sicilian Mafia and this is a pretty good biopic, loosely based on the life of prominent "camorrista" Raffaele Cutolo.

The film deals extensively with the strong links between organized crime and politics and makes some very badly veiled allusions to modern Italian politicians and events.

From a film point of view, there's not much in the way of character development. The main character studies medicine (?) in an attempt to escape the criminal milieu he is meant for, but after being sent to jail over a crime of passion he turns into a cold, pitiless man who ruins and corrupts everyone around him. He is nothing like Brando's delicately nuanced Vito Corleone. This guy is ugly, evil and completely unredeemable.

On the plus side, the film was shot by Tornatore who was responsible for the magic Cinema Paradiso. This works as a sort of "flip side" to that films rather elegiac vision of Southern Italy.

Well worth watching, if only to see an "alternative" mafia film, where a nation's problems are most definitely NOT solved by a quickie car chase.