Sick Product of a Sick System

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Great Film overall

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

I've seen the series, read the book, decided to give the film a shot. I wondered how they would be able to tell a story spanning 20 years in a 2 hour film. They couldn't.A lot of movies are based on events - a bank robbery, a kidnapping, a terrorist attack averted, a hijacking, you get the point. With gang movies, a lot of the drug stuff is condensed to a montage, with the focus being on the gang politics instead. This movie tried to do everything - two kidnappings, one terror plot, a gang's rise, gang politics, the business of the gang, gang wars (with rival gangs) and a court trial. And if that's not enough, the film wanted to show the side of law enforcement too, showing the detective trying to bust the gang. 20 years in 2 hours 30 minutes. There is a montage every 5 minutes, actually, most things are shown in quick cuts + music montages - the gang introduction, kidnapping, Terrible, drug business, Moro affair, Bologna... I stopped counting after that.The choice of casting is terrible (no pun intended). Terrible, one of the scariest people in the TV show, is shown to be a wimp, crying in front of the gang. Accorsi is a good actor, but terrible as Scialoja. He's guilty of overacting here. Screaming and waving his arms around like a cartoon Italian. Freddo, the best character in the TV show, was ruined as well. In the TV show, he's a deep and troubled character, taking you along with him in an existential crisis. In this film, pretty-boy Kim Rossi Stuart plays Freddo and actually says "Why do you hate me, huh? Is it because I'm pretty?" Seriously. Libano is a criminal mastermind on the show, on the film he's an idiot who doesn't know how to handle a gun.If you didn't know the actors, you would think that this is the low budget film remake of the TV show. The production values are low. The show looks cinematic, here, this looks like a TV film.This film fails in comparison to the show. It's less of a film and more of a collection of spoilers for a great TV show. Even if you have no interest whatsoever in the show, skip this film. It's not worth your time, unless you want to see a film about a gangster drug lord called "The Terrible" crying and wimpering in front of a boy who says "Don't hate me because I'm pretty."

Romanzo Criminale, or Crime Novel in English, reminded me of recent Scorsese film The Departed; a film that's fast, smooth, slick and glamorous but knows where it stands on the line that on one side actually contains glamorisation. I may not be overly familiar with the bulk of the cannon that is Italian crime cinema, but Crime Novel seems to want to appeal to the broadest possible audience; there is a showy sense of colour and energy, a feeling of the broad and of the epic when, in personal terms, low-grade and gritty content always works best for me. I think Crime Novel has the necessary characters to tell a 'proper' crime story what with prostitutes, petty thugs, drug dealers and kidnappers but it remembers all too often to 'have fun' with its subject matter. Had the characters been slightly less-believable and more akin to something from a Guy Ritchie attempt, the 'clash' I felt was there might not have been.Regardless, and despite this wavering sense in relation to content, the film feels good enough to warrant a pretty strong recommendation; and film that doesn't necessarily know its foundations but knows exactly where it wants to go when it's off and running. The film covers a number of petty Italian criminals throughout the 1970s and briefly onwards from there. They are Ice, Lebanese and Dandy; three kids that come of age in the 1960s when they steal a car, briefly avoid the police and then see their fourth friend die as one of them is arrested and jailed. The film gets across the direction the makers will take it down very early on and in some style, introducing the leads in a flashy and sexy manner; many will have issues with young 'gangsters' inhabiting the screen with their 'cool' nick-names such as 'Ice' and so forth. Crime Novel carries the same tone as, and certainly takes inspiration from, pieces like City of God and any Guy Ritiche venture into this genre, but it does fall short of those examples.It's oddly symbolic that a kidnapping of a certain someone would act as the launching of the soon to be enlarged group; it signifies a taking of something for personal gain, a swiping of a person that gives them the opportunity to swipe the city for themselves. These guys party hard by night in a carefree and obnoxious manner, they stab people by day; something the film wants us to understand very early on when that sense of juxtaposition is apparent as is a feeling of low-level crime, a sense that these people are not afraid of what they do and may well inhabit public spaces, continue with whatever it is they enjoy and might well be never more than a few yards away from you.The film lays its goals down in a pretty clear cut fashion when the leader of this rising group makes reference to the Roman empire, he wants something large; powerful and something to be feared as the result of all this. The notion is in debt more toward American crime films of old, Scarface and The Godfather in particular as this study of the hierarchy is set up. But Crime Novel doesn't want to be about one man as much as it does rather a few. Throughout the duration of the picture, characters will fall in love; speak of eloping; aid in the taking over of entire drug empires and go on journeys of psychological paranoia while law enforcers around them go on an ever-escalating pursuit of these criminals, that see themselves dice with temptation and death mere scenes apart. The film even takes time to incorporate Italy's 1982 World Cup win.So you've got a lot going on. The film doesn't hang about, and I don't think it really cares whether we connect with all of the characters in the piece, just so long as our attention is drawn to one or two. What acts as an interesting element to all of this is the character of Patrizia (Mouglalis), the prostitute and lone female figure amidst this male dominated world and genre. The sexual tension between her and leading law-enforcer Scialoja (Accorsi), which is displayed in certain scenes, comes across as something out of another film entirely – the odd thing is, most of these scenes are more interesting than most others as a sort of side-show of lust and temptation, always drawing you into the criminal world. The character of Patrizia, I suppose, acts as a bridge between them; those being 'right' and 'wrong'.If most scenes in the film are raw and enjoy the 'in-your-face' delivery, then the scenes Scialoja and Patrizia share carry a certain amount of slow burning energy that the others lack. If the performances of Mouglalis and Accorsi are impressive, it's because they have something raw enough to work with, which is slightly more than the rest of the cast can really lay claim to. Importantly, Crime Novel isn't a glorification. By the end, the film has gone so far that it thinks it can branch off into a revenge tale, and given its sheer energy and ruthlessness in telling a sprawling crime piece, it sort of earns the right if the priorities are correct – which they are. Made with energy and a fair amount of efficiency, Romanzo Criminale delivers without romancing criminals, too much.

Critics compared this to the likes The Godfather and Goodfellas - I wasn't convinced by these comparisons, nor should you.It's no where near as good as Goodfellas or The Godfather, which is what people have compared it to. The director can't decide whether to have the viscera nature of Scorsese's film, or the elegant violence of The Godfather.Most of the time I was bored by this film. It takes itself far too seriously and feels about as populated as Chernobyl. It is like the character Ice - cold; a gangster film which is passable and doesn't have much heart.

You might have noticed it, but if not, be advised that this movie is over 2 and half hours long. You have to cope with that, if you want to watch this movie. But it is worth the time you spend and it also needs the time! Because this is a movie that tells a story that goes over three decades. And who better to direct a (european point of view) mafia story than Michelle Placido? Known for his role in "La Piovra" (especially in Germany under the title "Allein gegen die Mafia", which would translate into "Alone against the mafia"), he now is behind the camera for this one! Since you know about the running time, you know what genre this is, the only thing left to say is ... if you decide to watch this, you have to watch it carefully to get everything.