A Última Noite de Amore

Mesmerizing opening with an aerial night view of Milano and the trademark giallo soundtrack which reminded me of Morricone: it must be in my top 50... maybe even higher.

Not an absolutely perfectly designed noir/police drama: I felt like I missed something that wasn't completely clear despite my efforts.

Also some scenes and parts of the screenplay were a little weak partly due to the attempt of creating authentic main characters - which is a rarity in today's marketing designed productions - partly for reasons I can't pinpoint but involve both the writer/director and the actors.

Yet it's been more than a year since I've watched something as compelling in the genre (which I'm a great fan of - as you can see from my list of over 1000 watched productions - and about which I'm starting to become hardly satisfiable).

Great music, maybe a little too dark and dramatic compared to the script, but that's nitpicking.

Photography as well tries to mimic the '70s style of giallos with its simple camera work and original lights/colors - though maybe indulging a bit too much with Milano postcards.

So if you love well designed and executed crime stories, you have to add it to your list.

The only unforgivable negative is the audio: 2/10. Better use subtitles in a language you know, because not even a mother tongue can get more than 95% of what is said in the original italian version. The most understandable italian is spoken by one asian character...

It's an 8, which means a 10 in the world of IMDB.

A wonderful opening sequence with stylistically typical writing and score - is this the return of the Poliziottesco? No, the hopeful nostalgics quickly hit the ground of reality, obviously that of our time. No tough 70s cop, a leading actor who, in my impression, initially embodies more of a RomCom prototype, for example. A deliberate break in style? In his role, he is semi-corrupt, disillusioned, tired of everyday life, battered, on the verge of becoming a "loser". So after a leisurely and not very meaningful 3/4 hour, i.e. A rather long span, I was ready to set my expectations back to zero for the sake of fairness, let's see what else happens, and suddenly the plot really picks up speed. The dynamics in the middle section are great cinema, the exciting follow-up in the episode no less thrilling. The makers' plan probably worked for me, hats off, a wonderful film with a great script.

Even if I'm Italian, I usually don't like italian thrillers so much. Well, this one is very, very different. It makes you feel you're inside the movie the whole time, even if there are not so many extraordinary special effects or chase scenes. You can feel from the very beginning it has a wonderful screenplay, great direction and excellent soundtrack.

Almost all actors (Favino and Caridi on top) are really amazing in their characters! I only wish some of them had used a less pronounced southern accent, or at least to have the subtitles, because some of the clips (fortunately not too many) are really hard to follow if you are not from Calabria or Sicily.

Long time since I enjoyed a thriller/police story so much, especially at the cinema.

No CG, no big explosions, just extraordinary screenplay and acting performance. Fantastic the double-shooting of the flashback scenes, while the whole plot is re-constructed piece by piece.

I hope that only sub-titles will be added for the Sicilian and Calabrese dialogues, they are essential to create the "urban jungle" clash, as much as the chinese dialogues are kept in the original audio.

Favino fills the screen without saying a word for half his scenes, you squirm and suffer with him the whole time: yet another masterpiece from him.

A must watch.

For me, it's neither, not a polizziotesco from the seventies nor a giallo either; and I have seen tons of them during my moviegoer life. It's simply a new kind of cinema: brilliant, intelligent, sensitive, a bit too complex and sophisticated for my empty brain. Very hard to follow because of a splendid editing. Powerful acting too, outstanding atmosphere, production design. You could find this kind of film from Spain or even Argentina, not only Italy. It is dark, bleak, but, I repeat, not very easy to understand nor explain in details. Anyway, it's a movie that it's also impossible to forget. I hope the director will continue after this one.