Piranhas

The popularity of Italian language gang movies and TV shows has risen to high level in recent years and we have Gomorrah and Suburra to thank for that and while Piranhas isn't quite up to their standards, it's still an interesting look at the underclasses in Napoli .

Six 15-year-old boys deal drugs and use assault rifles to rule their neighborhood in Naples, interested only in making money, wearing designer clothes and surviving in a world where they believe they have no future.

There isn't much of a story in this film . It flows like the boys lives . Without a care . The kids live for today and that's the way the movie is made . Not a great deal of structure but plenty of spontaneity. They probably know things are never going to turn out well but they are going to enjoy it while they can .

Exactly as it did watching it .

The film evidently won the screenplay award at Berlin because it is very true to ground reality of Naples. The title is appropriate. Teenagers who cannot see a future, become small time Godfathers, collecting protection money and selling drugs, working in large groups to get a menacing visibility. My problem with the film: where are the cops? You see them just once during a wedding dinner sequence.

The film apparently uses non-actors. The lead role of Nicola played by Francesco di Napoli is notable, as is the role of his screen mother toiling away to make ends meet. Nicola's dad is never shown or discussed. Francesco could go places as an actor under the right director.

Average film--nothing great

Now I'm not comparing this to City of God, just to be clear. I just like coming up with nice summary/pun lines. Connections can be made to a degree of course, but they can stop at the fact that you have kids and criminality as subject mater here. Having said that, the movie may feel slow to some. But it is quite impactful nonetheless. Not to mention that the style (in your face, the actors faces that is) is quite harrowing. It really puts you in the middle of it.

You may disagree with certain things, like the one central female character being swayed by macho and bully behavior ("male" king of the jungle style), but don't forget what world they all grew up in. So this is as authentic (or at least feels like it) as it gets. And the dialog (which may or may not be a bit improvised - otherwise kudos to the actors for conveying their emotions in such manner) is just on the spot! If you are into these types of movies, you'll rejoice and be "entertained". Otherwise maybe you'd like to stay away from this

Even though the acting was really good, the movie did not establish any emotional ties towards the characters on screen. Instead of concentrating on the evolvement of the characters, the film focuses more on the plot. Considering that I found the storyline rather predictable and pressed into a typical screenwriting-scheme, it did not catch me nor it surprised me.

The movie was shot quite close. Most of the time you see a range of close shots and close-ups which I found quite restricting in the beginning but I got used to it after a while and by the end of the movie I appreciated the artistic aspect of this choice of filming.

For me personally this movie does not dig deep enough beyond the surface to be more than average and to leave a lasting memory in my mind. But it definitely has some good moments, so if you get the chance to watch it, do so.

I don't think that books are automatically better than their movie adaptations, but this is clearly the case: not only a lot of changes were made but the general meaning of the story was subverted, delivering a faded, less thought-provoking message.

Saviano penned both the screenplay and the novel, but he and the other writers choose to omit the violent scenes, include several scenes that did not occur in the novel, and change the personality of the main character.

In the movie, Nicholas is a teenager who essentially dreams about making mafia "great again", and is portrayed as having a sense of justice and being essentially a good boy who did terrible decisions. The violence is limited to a few gunshots, and the meaning of the ending focuses on the impossibility of change.

In the novel, Nicolas is immediately portrayed as a power-thirsty teenager who was inspired by Machiavelli and that has no ethics whatsoever (e.g., mild spoilers, to give an idea: to punish a gang member for having stolen a gun without permission, he almost forces his sister to be gang raped; the movie version of the character would have never done this). The violence is brutal and striking, and the story aims at describing the inner evil that teenagers that are involved with the System experience because of the environment they live in.

I personally felt much more invested while reading the novel than while watching the movie. Except for one specific scene that was the only identical one to the novel, most of the sequences felt dry or non-authentic. For who knows the novel, I think it is impossible to appreciate the film. Technically wise, it felt very similar to Garrone's Gomorra, probably it aimed at replicating the feel of that movie, but while the distanced photography and dryness of sequences in Gomorra gave a "tranche de vie" feel, it is not the case for La Paranza dei Bambini. It is sad that this film was chosen to be ran at Berlinale, when Italy has just released Il Primo Re, a masterful and very creative work of art that risks not receiving well-deserved international recognition.