Romanzo Criminale

Romanzo Criminale was released in the UK in 2006. It was directed by Michele Placido.

The blurb on the poster describes it as "Goodfellas meets The Godfather". It's not far wrong, though of course it's vastly inferior to those two films. Set in Italy, the film follows a group of childhood friends as they morph into petty criminals and big shot gangsters. Starting off in Rome 1960's, the film spans a couple of decades into the 1980's. In the first sequence we are introduced to the young friends, all given nicknames- Lebanese (the volatile leader), Ice (devoted best friend) and Dandy (intelligent but cowardly). The boys break into a car and are tracked down by police. The importance of this sequence is to show they are embedded in this life of crime from an early age and to establish characteristics of the main players.

The editing is snappy and you have to keep up with the frenetic pacing of events. In the next scene the director has cut to around 15 years later, where Ice is released from jail, and is being awaited by Lebanese. Quick as a flash, Lebanese tells him about a kidnapping scheme, and the ball starts rolling. There are lots of empty spaces in the film, where the audience is supposed to connect things together. It doesn't work too badly; the film has a high energy and it's entertaining, though I have some reservations whether it's style over substance.

The first half of the film is made up of the trio's ascent to the top of the mafia pile. This entails cold blooded murder, blackmail and general bloodbaths. Of course, it's all done in a stylish fashion. At this point in the film the relationships between the three are relatively content. It's the inevitable introduction of women and greed into the film that signals the decline of the empire.

If the first half of the film is caught up in the glorious heyday of the ascent, then the second wallows in the misery of the descent. In house fighting occurs when Lebanese has to contend with Ice's new girlfriend, and Dandy starts to feel the temptation of riches. All obvious staples of the the mafia/drug dealer genre, but Placido's film is engaging enough not to let them make the film grow stale.

While Romanzo Criminale never scales the emotional dramatics of the Godfather, nor the visceral bloodletting of Goodfellas, it does enough to stand up on its own two feet. The performances are steely and confident, the film looks and sounds great and it offers up another convincing portrayal of greed and dishonesty.

7/10