Romanzo criminale

As the history of modern (1970-95) Italy plays out - the kidnapping of Aldo Mora, the Bologna bombing etc. - a ruthless gang of outsiders are successfully muscling in on Rome's lucrative drug and gambling rackets. Meanwhile, a hard-nosed detective is tracking their activities, seeking evidence to put them away. And lurking even deeper in the background are State black ops figures who may or may not be manipulating both the criminals and the events themselves.

I was expecting the sort of cheap crime exploitation movie that proliferated in Italian cinema back in the 70s, but this is a different, much more ambitious and better type of movie. Crime Novel is structured very much like an Italian version of American Gangster. It has the same intimate yet gritty feel, the same long slow story arc, playing out over years against a background of world events; the dedicated cop who seems like the only police official who sees his duty as catching criminals rather than taking bribes; and drug dealers who see themselves as businessmen providing a service rather than villains, and most of time they are.

The focus is clearly on the gang. They grew up together in the streets. Crime and friendship are what holds them together. They have strong loyalties to those closest to them but can be ruthless to those who oppose them. Individually, they have frailties, but together they are formidable. The script is structured to provide each of the central characters with plenty of screen time, and its strong dialogue and intimate tone create very multi-dimensional and mostly sympathetic portraits.

The resulting movie is very watchable and a worthy companion piece to movies like Carlito's Way, Scarface and American Gangster. Recommended.

Romanzo Criminale is a strange movie. I'm most of the time quite critical about what I see, but about this particular movie, I can't quite seem to make up my mind. I can find a thousand faults to it : the limited storyline doesn't really develop the historical and political context, the actions is sometimes quite difficult to follow, the characters are totally cliché (the-bad-gangster-guyswho falls in love with the-beautiful-virgin-mary-reincarnation, the repented hooker, the good policeman, the really bad godfathers with all their money, the villa by the sea and the twenty-five year old wife. And yet I enjoyed it. It's not the movie of the year but there's a certain something that makes it different, that saves it from being a total mess and a failure, and turns it into a mysterious movie.

I completely disagree with the last writer. I found this film to be a High speed roller-coaster following the path of Crime in the last century of Rome's history. The Brutal Violence and callous disregard for the people they prey on washes away any chance of redemption for the Protagonist Anti-hero or the group of people he moves with & the writer makes no attempt to forgive them. The film glamourises their way of life yet inevitably does not end happily with only the strongest surviving and even them eventually being cut loose by the people who pull their Machavellian strings..Sex, drugs and violence reign supreme in a film that, although not perfect, paints a vivid picture of the blood spattered underbelly of Roman society. The only faults that I could raise about it would possibly be it's length which at times drags and could perhaps have done with a slightly less flabby cut..

It's not that "Romanzo criminale" is a bad movie. It's only a movie we've seen so many times (from the Godfather to Once Upon a Time in America) done so much better.

Storywise, although it is of Italian origin, "Romanzo" is as bland as any new mafia movie, dealing with revenge, honor and family. The script is rather tedious too, with very few moments of sparkle, and even though the movie looks good, it only starts to feel like a watchable movie in its last quarter. And as if it weren't enough that the film is mediocre, it also bears resemblance to an odyssey if we are to consider its playing time and the way I, as a viewer, interpreted it.

The one interesting aspect is related to the political facet of the mafia, and especially to the situation before the fall of the communist regimes. But this definitely doesn't make up for the weak plot. All there is...is a series of events, linked to one another, sprinkled with love but far too hollow to transcend. Sadly.

Very good, though the story is very dramatized (and I'm Italian, so I know the story of my country).

It takes a real gangster group, link it with neo-fascist and communist actions, real characters and fictional ones, creepy cospirative figures...

It's very far from the criminal stories seen up to now in our country: the cop-movies was a genre abandoned since the '70s (they flourished in the period portrayed in Romanzo Criminale, mostly as a consequence of the feelings of the people against the political and criminal acts of these years).

But it's a very good movie, with solid story and great musics, one of the best in Italian cinematography of the last years (with "Dopo Mezzanotte / After Midnight" and "Le conseguenze dell'amore")