Piranhas

This afternoon, I discovered this rather interesting film without having preliminary read the eponymous book written by Roberto Saviano and published in 2018: a band of eight teenage boys still eating chocolate cookies and arguing with the little brother when a packet of biscuits was emptied without their preliminary agreement, take opportunely advantage of the fall of the Mafioso of their Neapolitan district to become caliph instead of the caliph, like Iznogoud in the famous cartoon created by René Goscinny and Jean Tabary, but with ethics and values like Vito Corleone played by Robert De Niro in Le Parrain, 2ᵉ partie (1974). I recognized the mesmerizing atmosphere of Naples, with its manifold alleys as hilly as lively. Moreover, the cast is overall of high quality, especially the main actor Francesco Di Napoli.

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.

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

I have a lot of friends from Naples and they said this movie depicts the reality of the situation of the youth in Naples today. You follow the story of one boy with his friends who tries to make ends meet while they dont go to school and easily succumb to the ways of the Mafia for easy money. It's really sad. The movie is well made and well paced, you keep asking yourself what are they going do to next and how is this going to end. The love story dragged on a little bit but otherwise its a good watch that I would recommend.

I was surprised the ratings weren't higher. This is better than almost every modern Italian gangster movie. The acting is amazing and direction is very good. Paced very well. Nothing that unique in terms of plot but executed extremely well.