Le maître de la camorra

The first feature from Cinema Paradiso man Guiseppe Tornatore,this is quite unlike his other films. It's a fairly generic but solid gangster saga along Scarface lines,and is loosely based on fact. There's little of the beauty and lyricism you would expect from Tornatore,but he proves himself perfectly adequate to the demands of the mob genre.

With a very strong performance from the erratic Ben Gazzara as the anti hero of the title {especially good in the latter sections when he starts to lose his mind},it's your basic rags-to-riches-to-comeuppance story,and indeed there is much that is very familiar. Nevetheless,there are a few original touches,such as having Gazzara's character rise to the top using his brains rather than violence and do it mostly while he is stuck in prison. Having his sister co-run the business with him is also a novel touch,and politicians are shown to be as crooked as the gangsters. The surprisingly low key ending is also very well judged.

Moving at quite a fast pace despite it's two and a half hour length,there are plenty of the expected brutal stabbings and shootings,well staged if a little repetitive. One very bloody murder in a shower is especially memorable,yet here as in some other scenes,we actually don't see all of the gory detail,just enough to make it effective.

Il Camorrista is a little choppy and has the odd awkward edit,as if it had been cut down from a much longer film. Still,gangster movie fans will find plenty to enjoy,and the film deserves more than the current UK DVD,which has shoddy picture quality,is badly dubbed and fullscreen!

The "camorra" is the Neapolitan equivalent to the Sicilian Mafia and this is a pretty good biopic, loosely based on the life of prominent "camorrista" Raffaele Cutolo.

The film deals extensively with the strong links between organized crime and politics and makes some very badly veiled allusions to modern Italian politicians and events.

From a film point of view, there's not much in the way of character development. The main character studies medicine (?) in an attempt to escape the criminal milieu he is meant for, but after being sent to jail over a crime of passion he turns into a cold, pitiless man who ruins and corrupts everyone around him. He is nothing like Brando's delicately nuanced Vito Corleone. This guy is ugly, evil and completely unredeemable.

On the plus side, the film was shot by Tornatore who was responsible for the magic Cinema Paradiso. This works as a sort of "flip side" to that films rather elegiac vision of Southern Italy.

Well worth watching, if only to see an "alternative" mafia film, where a nation's problems are most definitely NOT solved by a quickie car chase.

This was a good plot for the entire movie. It was all about Mafia, what you have to do climb the crime world ladder and reach the top where you are alone, because you cannot trust no one. The cast was amazing, a lot of italian actors that did a great job, a good Ben Gazzara (who did not talk in italian, he was dubbed). I found him a little bit melodramatic here in there, but none the less, the performance was good. The music was great, mesmerizing here in there, adding mistery and a lot of tension to a movie that goes wild in the second half of it. A great movie, great plot, great actors, music and cinematography.

The main reasons why I bought this movie, are that it finally shows the Camorra and because of Tornatore. I read that this movie was banned in Napels, but I forgot the actual reason. Maybe it was banned because it gave politicians a bad name or because the Camorra was against it.

This movie has many things that the most (Hollywood) gangster movies are missing; gritty look, realistic gore and NOT glorifying crime. The Tornatore directing is very good; it's maybe not as superb as his "Legend of 1900" or "Nuovo Cinema Paradiso" but that's okay, especially for a debut.

Ben Gazzara is good enough as The Professor (Raffaele Cutolo). He appears to me as a real Camorra capo (cunning, cruel and evil) would be. The only thing that bothered me about his acting, is that it looks a little silly when he goes crazy and bangs his head to the glass, but the dubbing isn't really helping there.

The supporting cast is quite good. Some of them also make their appearance in La Piovra (Nicola Di Pinto) and some even in Godfather Part 3 (The assassin from Sicily plays a magistrate here). There were no actors that bothered me or anything.

The soundtrack is good. It's no Morricone, but you cannot expect that from every Italian movie.

The DVD (EAN 5050232700587) is not very good. It is in English with no subtitles. The picture quality is bad, but still watchable. The sound is OK. There are no specials on the disc and for a movie of 144 minutes long, it has a very small number of scenes.

If you like La Piovra, you like this. If you don't like La Piovra, you can also like this, but it's a little different than what most people are used to.

The Italian mafia is the world's best known one but yet it always had been the Americans who made the best mafia movies, involving Italians. This movie however shows that also Italians themselves are capable of making a good mafia movie.

The director Giuseppe Tornatore made his debut with this movie. He would go on to make world wide well known Italian movies such as "Giuseppe Tornatore" and "La leggenda del pianista sull'oceano". He's actually one of the best directors at the moment that Italy has. For a debut movie this one is also certainly a great one.

I think that it's really foremost due to its professional directing approach that makes this movie such a great one. It's not really done typically European style and it has a way more professional look and feel over it than most other genre attempts, made in Italy itself.

The story is quite good and loosely based on some true events and characters. You could say that the movie is being a bit overlong at times but this was probably also due to the fact that this movie was initially intended to be an 5 hour TV-movie, which no doubt would had aired in different one hour parts or so. Luckily the movie is not being that long now to watch but still it's almost three hours long and not always being good enough to hold your interest throughout.

Ben Gazzara is a good actor and is perhaps best known for his Hollywood work but I'm still not too sure if he best the best choice for this movie. Perhaps he just appeared too friendly to me to look at him as this big though mafia boss who is building his empire and pulling the strings on all sides. Still his acting qualities compensate a lot.

A pretty good unknown mafia movie, from one of Italy's best directors.

8/10

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