Dir: Michele Placido, Italy/France, 2010, 125 mins, Italian with subtitles
Cast: Kim Rossi Stuart, Valeria Solarino, Filippo Timi, Paz Vega, Moritz Bleibtreu
Review by Dave Hall
In the spirit of Mesrine, another obscure 70s Euro-crim gets the This is Your Life… treatment in this lively if derivative thriller. Whilst it’s a novelty to see an Italian crime film in which the Mafia is barely mentioned and the Church only referenced obliquely, Placido’s film doesn’t quite give us enough social or political context; it’s difficult to see why anyone would think this story was worth telling other than as a primer for those new to the gangster genre.
Renato Vallenzasca (Rossi Stuart) has spent most of the 70s either robbing Italian banks, or trying to escape from the country’s jails. Along the way he has collected a gang of acolytes including childhood friend and drug-addicted screw-up Enzo (Timi), made an enemy of preening crime kingpin Francis Turatello (Francesco Scianna), and become something of an Italian folk legend despite a rapidly accumulating body count. Needless to say, in his personal life those closest to him got hurt the most, including Consuelo (Solarino), the mother of his child, his long-suffering parents, and his childhood playmate Antonella D’Agostino (Vega).
Rossi Stuart is terrific as Vallenzasca, effortlessly conveying the chutzpah and charisma that have kept the man on Italy’s front pages for so long, but also making him believable as a human being. Director Placido keeps things moving along briskly, although his intercutting of smash n’ grab with sex n’ drugs is strictly by the book. The problem is that none of the film’s 6 (six!) writers, including the real Antonella D’Agostino, seem to have been able to add any texture or depth to the proceedings: these people rob banks, they party, they get shot and they are banged up; repeat to fade. This is one of those films that seems simultaneously too long and too short.
Of course there are always compensations in seeing 70s cars and clothes on screen and Scianna’s hair on its own deserves some sort of award for keeping elegantly coiffured throughout. And there are some original touches; a car engine gets flooded during a raid and has to be jump started, Vallenzasca dresses as a white collar worker and walks straight into a bank’s back room. But something’s wrong when you start pondering the influences on a scene even as you’re watching: along with the inevitable Scorsese and Coppola can be added Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet (for the prison scenes), Italian serial killer slowburner Roberto Succo, and bizarrely Placido’s own Romanzo Criminale.
If you enjoy straight up gangster films with a touch of Italian tailoring and coachwork, this might be for you. Just don’t expect any seasoning with your crime minestrone.
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