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)

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)

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%. (03/13/2017)

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)

A film blurring the boundaries between concepts such as power, corruption, the church, good intentions, the mafia, usurious gangs, politics, interests, small/large fish, money, etc. Sollima continues in a style he has already successfully used in the Gomorrah series, and so this Gordian knot of destinies from the far side of Rome on the other side of Rome leads confidently and in terms of style towards a complex criminal movie. In this respect it can't deny "gomorrah's roots "(whether book, serial or movie). Like the influence of the duo Tropa de Elite or The Wire. A well-thought-out script (perhaps only the indicated church line was unused and therefore pointless), the actors, the hypnotic camera and the Martinez’s soundtrack, all this is at the highest level. The fact that it is "only" a kind of pilot for the upcoming series. It is a crime series that is one of the best ever created in this genre in recent years. And in this genre department a lot of amazing staff have been done. (01/01/2016)