El año rojo

The film's opening prologue states: "Rome - January 1978. Italy is in chaos. A group of terrorists calling themselves the Red Brigade has brought a shocked society to a state bordering on revolution...it is the "Verliebt in die Gefahr"¨ this expression seen in a title card at the start of the movie is the film's "Year of the Gun" title spelled in German . The film takes place in 1978 , a young American called David Raybourne (Andrew McCarthy) arrives in Rome , he is a reporter who begins a novel based on the political instability around him , using the names of real people in his first draft . Soon , an ambitious photojournalist wants to collaborate with him and the Red Brigade terrorist group wishes to remove anyone associated with the book . Then , the photojournalist , Alison King (Sharon Stone) , photographed them in action . Both of whom , Andrew McCarthy and Sharon Stone experience the nasty activities of the Red Brigades terrorists close up in Rome, 1978.

The picture deals with the violent and turbulent times when the dangerous terrorist organization Red Brigades committed terrible crimes , kidnaps and massacre . As the Brigate Rosse or Red Brigades is the principal character in the yarn . This is a thrilling and twisted flick about the political scene in Italy at the time of the kidnapping of the former prime minister Aldo Moro (16 March 1978) . In fact the film's closing epilogue states: "Fifty-four days after he was kidnapped, Aldo Moro's bullet ridden body was found in the trunk of a car parked in the center of Rome". It is a mediocre movie that takes place in ups and downs with surprises and plot twists , but also with unfortunate and unpredictable events . Everything revolves around the unstable highly charged political environment : the university in Rome at that time and politics in Italy during those days of civil unrest during the 1970's .The picture depicts accurately those thunderous and criminal times . Although failing on occasion to balance the thin line it establishes between perception and reality , offering a semi-realistic look at the priorities and lives of political terrorists . Mediocre performances from Andrew McCarthy as American journalist covering political news in Italy discovering the mafia net is at all levels and entangled with the Red Brigades when attempting to help a friend and Sharon Stone as a nosy and snooping photo-reporter nosy who becomes involved in all kinds of problems . Some love scenes starred by Andre MacCarthy , Sharon Stone and Valeria Golino are really torrid. They're accompanied by a mostly Italian cast , giving acceptable interpretations such as : John Pankow , George Murcell , Francesca Prandi , Lou Castel , among others.

It has an anticlimatic and unappropriate soundtrack composed by synthesizer Bill Conti who previously musicalized the classic Rocky . Atmospheric and sombre cinematography by Blasco Giurato. The motion picture was middlingly directed by John Frankenheimer . At the beginning he worked for TV and turned to the cinema industry with The Young Stranger (1957) . Disappointed his with first feature film experience he came back to his successful television career directing a total of 152 live television shows in the 50s . He took another opportunity to change to the big screen , collaborating with Burt Lancaster in The Young Savages (1961) and Birdman of Alcatraz (62) ending up becoming a successful director well-known by his skills with actors and expressing on movies his views on important social deeds and philosophical events and film-making some classics as ¨The Manchurian candidate¨, ¨Seven days of May¨ and ¨The Train¨ and , in addition , ¨Grand Prix¨ also with great car races . Rating : 5.5/10 . Well worth seeing for John Frankheimer completists . Only for thriller, suspense buffs and Sharon Stone fans .

A good title, but more applicable to 1981, since that was the year that saw attempts to assassinate the President of the United States and the Pope.

This film sounds of interest on paper for the prospect of seeing John Frankenheimer address the abduction and murder of Aldo Moro. It doesn't stint on the gunplay (one particularly nasty moment depicts a horse getting caught in the crossfire). But there's even more talk - some of it in Italian - while the old dynamism that brought us 'The Manchurian Candidate' is sorely lacking, and Andrew McCarthy makes a very passive hero.

In compensation Sharon Stone brings a feral power to the role of an American photojournalist who never lets a little aggro get in the way of a photo opportunity. While it concludes with one of Frankenheimer's trademark closeups of a TV screen.

The Red Brigade ( Brigatte Rosse ) was an Italian left wing terrorist organisation that in the 1970s launched a terrorist campaign to over throw the government of Italy and in its place have proletarian dictatorship that would lead to a classless Utopian society . Like its idealogical counterparts in the German Red Army Faction Brigatte Rosse had a problem mobilising the masses . This was undoubtedly due to the fact that hard left wing intellectualism fails to strike a chord in the human condition . Compare this to nationalist instincts that makes people in Northern Ireland want to join the IRA or the UVF or people living in the Gaza Strip or West Bank who join hard line Islamic terrorist organisations . By one of life's ironies the idea of left wing revolution in a democratic European state fails to appeal to few people except left wing middle class intellectuals hence the masses of Germany and Italy fail to mobilise and the terror caused by the German RAF and Italian BR quickly fizzled out

YEAR OF THE GUN starts off by telling the audience that Italy in 1978 was on the brink of revolutian but was it ? True there was shootings and bombings and angry demonstrations against capitalism but as a potential revolution France in 1968 and Northern Ireland in the early 1970s both came closer than Italy in the late 1970s . As the story progresses the audience finds itself becoming more and more clueless to the situation at the time . Why are demonstrators flying red banners fighting with well dressed young men carrying crowbars ? You see the story soon starts ignoring Italian geo-politics and concentrates on the character of David Raybourne an American who has lived in America for several years and is in a loving relationship with an Italian woman . In fact there's so much time taken up with David's relationship you find your self looking at your watch wondering when something is going to happen

There's two problems with the story , or rather one problem with the plot and one problem with the story telling . The plot when you stop to examine it becomes faintly ridiculous . David is writing a novel revolving around the Red Brigade and by an unlikely series of events the terrorists jump to the conclusion that he's a spy because the kidnap target in his novel is someone in real life the Red Brigade are planning to kidnap . I guess you're not supposed to think about this too much but aren't political thrillers supposed to be thought provoking ? The story telling itself is very poor because when Italian characters ( Who are almost always Red Brigade members ) get together they start speaking in Italian . Okay this is logical because for some reason in the cinematic world foreign characters suddenly start speaking in English when there's no English speaking characters present . Only problem is there's no subtitles and these frequent Italian speaking scenes mean any non Italian speaker won't have a clue as to what's going on which is a pity because I was wondering why the female terrorist likes to have men watch her when she goes to the toilet ! No I'm not kidding , there's a scene where this happens

John Frankenheimer was once a highly regarded director who made THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE , BLACK Sunday and SECONDS and who would later make the highly entertaining RONIN . Unfortunately at this stage of his career he was making rubbish like the ecological horror movie PROPHECY and Marlon Brandos swan song that featured a bunch of genetically engineered mammals having acid house parties and shooting each other ( You know the movie I'm talking about ) and in terms of directing this is no different except perhaps that it resembles a TVM in standards . The sound mix is rather poor too A messy political thriller that won't educate you about 1970s European politics and almost certainly won't thrill you much either

John Frankenheimer's "Year of the Gun" has an interesting plot, especially considering the setting (Italy's so-called Years of Lead: an undeclared civil war between protesters and the government throughout the 1970s). Unfortunately, the focus is primarily on the US journalists covering the events. It would've made more sense to get into the politics. Even ignoring the Red Brigades, the Vietnam War had riled up the younger generation (especially since so many fascist-adjacent people were in positions of authority). The government used a lot of questionable methods to arrest the terrorists; seems like the whole thing could be an analogy for events of the past twenty years (or twenty-one, if you want to include the G8 summit in Genoa).

In terms of form, the movie has some respectable merits in its characters, cinematography, etc. I particularly liked Sharon Stone's character. It's just that they could've expanded the story.

Two things didn't help this film, the first might've been the channel I watched it on, no subtitles for the Italian parts. The second was McCarthy and Stone as leads, they try hard but in a serious subject like this they play it as if it's Douglas / Turner in Romancing the Stone 3.

On the plus side the scenes in Roma are very well done, especially the demonstration scenes and you do get a hint of what it was like in the Italian capital during the terrorist happenings.

The other thing about the movie is it tells about what happened to Aldo Moro, the kidnapped Italian PM, but nothing of what happened after. I've tried looking into this but it could take a while.

A decent film even with it's limitations.