Roberto Succo

This film is stunning but really.

Everything is great; cast's performances, cinematography, plot, score and soundtrack, editing, and of course directing. All this makes you gaze at the empty screen after the movie's over for some minutes and think 'wow!'.

Maybe the film might be a bit too violent for some people. The violence in this motion picture is actually quite interesting. On the one hand there is graphic violence, gore; on the other hand the violence is underneath. It is how easily and spontaneously Succo kills that really shocks, more than the blood. And the fact that Roberto Succo really lived should really frighten.

The director Cédric Kahn in fact tried to show as less blood as possible, but still wanted the audience to be shocked. To do this he stays objective, he never tries to condemn Succo's acts or even to explain them. No, he just shows them. This gets even more ambiguous with Succo's love affair. Through this romance he seems to be quite a nice guy, strange but nice. So, on the one hand he is a really bad killer, and on the other hand he is a usual man in love. And this really killed me, I loved that effect. You don't really hate this guy, Succo, but you don't really love him neither. Kahn pushes this effect even further. The whole movie is structured that way. There are funny parts or love scenes and there are violent parts. So you can't just put this film in some category. The film is ambiguous in itself.

Then the cinematography. That is really great, especially in a scene where Succo climbs up on the prison's roof to kill himself (but the building isn't high enough he complains, actually this is one of the funny scenes). Most of the shots look like paintings. Really great job the director of photography did here.

The cast is great. Stefano Casseti had never acted before! He was discovered in a café by a friend of the casting director. But his performance is stunning! He has such great eyes, really scary, but also sad.... Islid Le Besco is perfect as usually and Patrick Dell'Isola should be mentioned also for his great acting.

So, I could go on and on that way, but just get that movie watched guys, it really is worth to be seen and you sure won't regret.

ROBERTO SUCCO is a good movie, especially when considering the fact that it's based on a true story. But if you want to watch a real, disturbing 'serial killer movie' like only the French can make (meaning character driven and néo-realiste), check out HARRY UN AMI QUI VOUS VEUT DU BIEN ("with a friend like harry" in english), C'EST ARRIVÉ PRÈS DE CHEZ VOUS ("man bites dog") and BERNIE. Also, if you can find it, see SEUL CONTRE TOUS ("i stand alone") by Gaspar Noé.

SUCCO just doesn't have the intensity and the tension that those movies have. But it has its moments. The minimaliste direction and the outstanding performance of Stefano Cassetti make it an enjoyable ride after all. But again, it just can't compete with HARRY.

Roberto goes by many names. At times he is a terrorist on the run, other times he is a spy, some times he is English, other times he is Italian. However his most dangers switch is the one he makes regularly between being an unusual young man with normal girlfriend before becoming a murdering thief who kidnaps his victims and occasionally rapes and murders them. He sets off with new girlfriend Lea – who gradually begins to realize that 'Kurt' is not all that he first appeared. Meanwhile the police continue their manhunt after finding several bodies in various states of decay.

Thanks to the free-to-air digital channel BBC4, I was able to see this film despite having never heard of it nor the situation that it is based on. The film starts with two mangled bodies being discovered then jumps forward 5 years to find Roberto living in France and making up interesting lives for each person he meets in clubs etc. In a way it should be fascinating but in reality this guy comes across as a disturbed young man who has no care of other people – hence he is free to kill. The film never really gets to the core of this character and, as a result, it is hard to care enough about him to be consistently interested in his story, leaving just a pretty unpleasant young man running around on the screen. I wouldn't go as far to call it dull or boring but it isn't the most engaging film I have ever seen and I found it hard to find something to hold on to (narrative-wise anyway).

The film is violent at turns but not in a gory, glamorising sort of way but in a rather matter of fact fashion that I felt suited the almost docu-drama presentation style. The violent scenes and car chases do provide some excitement but the majority of the film is rather talky. This is not a problem when we are being told a story or things are happening, but the slow development of his relationship with Lea seemed meandering without contributing anything or helped me learn anything more about Roberto or his story. Like I said, I would hesitate to call it dull but it wasn't delivered very well. The wider structure is a problem as it does jump around in time; I'm not sure about the real story but it felt like the film had a lot of ground to cover and that it was stretched to turn events into an engaging narrative for the sake of this film. The cast are OK but it is only really Cassetti who makes an impression; as much as I disliked his character, it was to his credit that I believed him as a dead-eyed, callous killer who seemingly had lost his true sense of self, and it is not his fault that the script didn't help him by building a better sense of character for us. Besco is OK but is not as important to the film as I suspect she was in real life – I felt she was a little bland but that may have been the fault of the material more than her. The support cast aren't bad, but none of them really made an impression on me and I have little to say.

Overall this is an OK film – it is interesting but it never really manages to be engaging in the way it should have been. The structure and delivery suck the life out of the material and make it feel rather plodding at times and it is easy to be uninterested in it for long spells. The story itself sounds compelling but the script never really tells us very much about the title character – meaning he could be any callous youth on a spree, why should he get my time over any other? Worth seeing but many will struggle to care about the story as the delivery is poor and the material is less than it should have been, even if it got the downbeat mood spot on.

This is French movie about a real-life Italian killer, Roberto Succo (Stefano Cassetti), who escaped a mental institution and went on a crime/murder spree all over Europe. He was somewhat similar to American killers Gary Gilmore (the subject of "The Executioner's Song")and Charles Starkweather (who loosely inspired "Badlands"). However, he was more a more prolific killer than the former, but didn't cause nearly as much panic as the latter--it actually took the police some time to piece together the various random crimes he was committing, which didn't immediately escalate to murder. The film "Roberto Succo" though probably MOST resembles the two later French "Mesrine" films (with Vincent Cassel), and like those, it seems to hew pretty closely to the real-life inspiration. Unfortunately, Succo was not nearly as interesting of a criminal as Jacques Mesrine, and Stefano Cassetti is not nearly as compelling of actor as the great Vincent Cassel.

During his crimes Succo stopped to rather tenderly romance a naive, 16-year-old French virgin named "Lea" (Isild Le Besco). But she was neither really an unwitting accomplice in his crimes like the real-life Carol Fugate (Starkweather's teenage paramour) or a sexy "moll" along the lines of the real-life Nichole Baker (played by Roseanne Arquette in "The Executioner's Song") or the character played by Ludivine Sagnier in the "Mesrine" movies. The unconventionally beautiful French actress Isild LeBesco does two things really well--one is act and the other is get naked, and she doesn't get nearly enough chance to do either here. Ludivine Sagnier has less screen time technically in the "Mesrine" movies than LeBesco does in this, but she is quite a bit more effective.

The film basically follows Succo as he commits his incredibly random crimes, and since Cassetti isn't the most exciting of actors, the film largely lacks a center and becomes quite boring. The police pursuit when it finally happens is almost an afterthought and the prison scenes at the end, while necessary to tell the full story, only prolong an already rather dull movie. It could have been improved with a stronger central performance, or if LeBesco had had a bigger role or had the kind of screen presence she would eventually develop in her later films (she is STILL by far the best reason to see this). Much of it though you have to blame on the filmmakers who perhaps stick TOO MUCH to the real-life inspiration at the expense of of making a very dramatically compelling movie.

For a film about a killer this is surprisingly dull.

Nothing much happens and even when things do happen they don't generate any real excitement or interest.

The acting is good from the two leads, Cassetti in particular delivers a great performance combining the certainty and stupidity of Succo but the rest of the cast also do what they need to.

The problem is that there is poor writing and direction and the fact that as a true story it isn't interesting, Succo is not a unique character, he isn't interesting or exciting.

Films of this sort normally try to generate tension or empathy or outrage and this generates nothing except a feeling of regret that you wasted your time watching it.