Suburra

Every now and then, I watch something that leaves me speechless. I’m so bewitched – in a good way – that I’m completely smitten. I had this exact feeling after watching the contemporary gangster movie Suburra. The harsh fates of individual characters of different standings are connected by a monstrous construction of a future complex with a casino on the edge of Rome in such a precise way that I was dumbstruck. The directors have skillfully incorporated interesting characters into the vicious cycle of the mafia history and by doing so, they closed an important chapter of the contemporary Italian underground. Some of the scenes were more brutal, some of them less. But all of them were predominated by this disgusting loss of humanity that was always supported by a strange unearthly music of the French band M38 and it amplified the entire story, which felt as if it was happening on a different planet altogether. (08/08/2016)

This is one of those films I find it hard to evaluate. I wouldn’t even dream of criticizing the film for a lack of quality filmmaking. It was definitely there, the problem was that the first hour was mind-numbingly boring and soporific. I also didn’t learn anything new - gypsies and politicians are the same everywhere and prostitution is a dangerous profession. I just had to write this down: "So if you don't go away now, I'll chop your leg off, put it in the fridge and return it when you bring me the money.” All right then. (05/01/2020)

A modern mafia thriller that maps the operation of organized crime vertically across the social structure of contemporary Italy. From political and church leaders and powerful bosses to prostitutes and small-time crooks doing dirty work in the field. The only thing missing here is the counterbalance of the police and state institutions facing the mafia. The story is set in a world so deeply rooted in corruption and dirty deals that the competition within the underworld poses a much greater, if not the only, risk. Well-written and directed, it is a complex experience that is rarely seen. I have only one reservation: big predators are usually rightfully at the top of the food chain, whereas in Suburra, the nobodies triumph – and at least in one case, against the logic of the situation's development and against the nature of their personality. However, Suburra is seriously close to a five-star rating. Overall impression: 85%. (13/03/2017)

This is the powerful experience that I was expecting (in vain) from last year’s Black Mass and Legend. The Italians play the mafia game at a completely different level than the Brits and Americans. One minor evil event leads to an apocalypse that engulfs and destroys everyone. The feeling of helplessness, the inability to avoid being caught in the web of crime, grows into furious madness. Suburra is a crime thriller, so it wouldn’t be celebrated in Cannes like Matteo Garrone’s artsier Gomorra, but it’s a damn engaging crime thriller that shows some great work with characters. Excellently played characters. The story is familiar in places, but never falls into clichés. The soundtrack’s use of M83’s greatest hits is rather bizarre, which perhaps makes it all the more effective. This musical choice made me add a fifth star. (07/03/2016)

It's safe to say that this gangster film has one of the more conservative audiences, and one can admire Sollima’s fatalistic lyrical approach all the more for portraying a corrupt and crime-ridden environment as an inescapable microcosm where people from all walks of life come together, united by abandonment of moral and ethical values. There are no positive heroes here, in fact almost everyone here is granted a well-deserved punishment, and as such the film accesses the viewer primarily through its mood. To do this, it uses rather atypical techniques, with many scenes lacking spatial exposition, for example. Often a scene is opened with shots of seemingly unrelated activities that gradually build up the space in which the sequence will take place. Which works mainly because those scenes are much longer than usual and, despite that very mood-setting atmosphere, are quite procedural. A perfect example is the supermarket shootout, which is an episode that takes place over four floors of a department store, though its protagonists only meet in one of the shops at the beginning. The extreme long shots occupying the generally familiar interiors of the mall and the civilian victims here straddle that very line between the criminal world and the civilian world. The resulting shape then manages to retain its bankrupt mood despite the revenge finale, because however much evil was punished, it was still just the cog in an ever-turning wheel that, with only minor variations, will continue to function forever. (27/06/2016)