Well-received directing debut for actor/writer Marco D’Amore who takes the lead as Čiro Di Marzio, a sort of Mafia Foundling who acquired his ‘Immortal’ moniker beating the odds on survival from birth to young adulthood: pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building; shot in the chest; left to drown in the Gulf of Naples. The Unsinkable Molly Brown has nothing on this guy. Though coming out of the Italian GOMORRAH crime series, it’s a stand-alone feature (first since the original back in 2008?*), the story picks up as series regular Čiro is ‘rewarded’ with one of those coveted Mob positions no one really wants, running cocaine distribution for his Naples outfit up in Latvia. There, he’s immediately thrust into a winless war of control between warring local & Russian criminal syndicates. Yet the film is at its most involving not in these sequences, but back in Naples during a prologue which has Čiro shot & dumped overboard; surviving that apartment collapse; then in flashbacks thru-out the film detailing his sentimental education as a 12-yr-old in tough Naples nabs, mentored by cog-in-the-wheel drug delivery man Bruno (whom Čiro cleverly saves from arrest in ‘immortal’ fashion) and his relationship to a girl ‘singer’ he’s sweet on. Back in Latvia, it’s THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE DRUG RUNNER as Čiro is forced to quickly deal with leaks inside his ‘posse’ and defuse a three-way power struggle involving his own team as well as the opposing Latvian & Russian teams. Surprisingly, the weakest aspect of this first feature isn’t writing or direction, but in the acting, plenty of weak links among the cast. (The kid in the flashbacks especially tame.) And while neither this film nor the series feels as eye-poppingly original as the first GOMORRAH film, it certainly works on its own terms.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *The original GOMORRAH/’08 has a documentary vibe no longer felt here. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/07/gomorrah-2008.html
No comments:
Post a Comment