Suburra

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. (03/07/2016)

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. (06/27/2016)

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. (01/05/2020)

Phenomenal visual stylization, atmospheric soundtrack, or M83 as we like him best, and a precise portrayal of the underworld. All this in a gritty, uncompromising and strongly un-American delivery by the Italians, who know the mafia like few others. An interesting affair that is so pompous and self-aware that you can't take your eyes/ears off it. One of the films of the year, though it lacks an even sharper finale. (06/20/2016)

It’s an audio-visually over-stylized, soft-spoken, yet more than eloquent fresco about the dark side of the eternal city that manages a quantum of characters, unprecedented violence, and metaphorical parables. Some of the threads could still use an extra knot at the end, but it is still an intense and exhausting viewing experience in the best sense. (01/15/2017)