Venice has been pretty good this year, but I didn't have a eureka moment until yesterday morning, when I saw Michele Placido's electric crime thriller Vallanzasca: Gli Angeli Del Male – loosely, Vallanesca: The Angels Of Evil (I'm assuming it's plural for reasons that will become clear). The film's subject, career criminal Renato Vallanzasca, is a big deal here in Italy, and there's never really been an equivalent in the UK. The closest we'd get here in the UK is perhaps Great (sic) Train Robber Ronnie Biggs, who was only party to one violent assault/murder (the driver never recovered), or even Howard Marks, who never hurt anyone directly (let's not kid ourselves about where his drugs came from). But Vallanzasca was a much fiercer and complex creature than either of those misguided folk heroes, especially in that he was the real deal. He may have been a gentleman thief in his mind, organising bank robberies and kidnappings while eschewing the dirty business of drug trafficking, but Vallanzasca did kill cops – whose job, he claimed was to shoot at him, so his actions simply counted as a glorified form of self-defence. Some people believe that, but the families of his victims do not, and the film has already encountered a tidal wave of controversy in the Italian press.The trouble with describing Placido's film is that it arrives after quite a spate of such movies, from Il Divo and Gomorra to A Prophet, Mesrine and even our own Bronson. But Vallanzasca has a power and energy all of its own, thanks, in part, to Kim Rossi Stuart, who co-starred in Placido's 2005 film Romanzo Criminale and dominates the film as the Milanese antihero. Stuart has a low-key presence that reminded me of an older version of the UK's Jim Sturgess, but there was also an element I couldn't put my finger on until I met him today – he looks more than a little like Barbarella's John Philip Law, whose 1968 vehicle Danger: Diabolik this film strangely resembles. Stuart offers an incredibly persuasive view of a charismatic gang leader – hence the title – who charmed more than a few Italians while robbing them blind, but he he does it with great subtlety, presenting Vallanzasca as a man of limited academic intelligence but of great instinct and intuition. He has a set of ethics that he sticks to – he never rats on his colleagues or kills civilians – but it's a muddled code that he often blurs. There's no backstory as such, he just is a crook, and the film is all the better for it.
There are two stories being told here, one is the straight story of a man's desire to be the best he can be in the field he has chosen, and the other is of a man whose pride is his downfall. As well as the cocky thief who bounds into banks and empties them with a smile, we see the battered, brutalised outsider who's still in prison – serving four life sentences – and will be only leave in a bodybag (assuming, of course, he doesn't contract the same mysterious cancer that won the Lockerbie bomber his get-out-of-jail-free card). Many Italians only saw the facade, however, and it's easy to see the appeal.
Placido shoots the action with incredible flair and text-book-crime-movie precision, and the breathless first half hour alone leaves many similar movies standing. But although it relaxes slightly, Placido – working from a very good script, co-written by Stuart – keeps the momentum moving right through to the end, skilfully juggling plot strands so that the film does not simply become a succession of set-pieces. And the collective cast should get its due here too; thanks to supporting turns by Francesco Scianna, as his suave nemesis, and Paz Vega, as his childhood friend Antonella, Vallanzasca has a ensemble atmosphere that has led to at least one shrewd viewer to mention it in the same breath as Boogie Nights, a comparison the film fully supports.
Artificial Eye has the film for the UK, and I don't know yet what their release plans are, but fans of this kind of thing should look out for it: this rock'n'roll outlaw thriller really hits the spot.
No comments:
Post a Comment