One of the Greatest Gangster Films of All Time

**Spoiler-free Review**

Suburra is easily in the same league as the great gangster films like The Godfather and Goodfellas. Like those films, Suburra effortlessly and perfectly walks the line between pulp and gritty realism. It is also one of the darkest films I've ever seen. It's relentlessly dark. Pitch black. It's a gangster film told and shot in the style of the blackest of neo-noir with the disturbing moral ambiguity and implacable nihilism.

I went into Suburra expecting to view a decent crime film, but not expecting much. I was extremely impressed after my first viewing, and rated it a 9/10, but it took me a while to get into it and to appreciate the complexity of the plot. Over the next few days, the images of the film and the characters and their fates and that wonderfully overdramatic soundtrack haunted me incessantly. I had to watch it again. On my second viewing, I paid very close attention from beginning to end, and I was blown away. It felt like a perfect film to me. Just flawless. Everything about it, from the script to the direction to the cinematography to the editing, was absolutely perfect. I ended up giving it a 10/10 and believing confidently that it is one of the greatest not only gangster/crime films of all time, but one of the greatest films period. Suburra continued to haunt me after my second viewing, mostly because I couldn't believe it was actually as great as I thought it was. Could a film in the same league as The Godfather and Goodfellas really be made in 2015, especially considering the state of the film industry in Hollywood? I had to watch it again to find its flaws and prove that my love for this film was mostly emotion-based and not from a place of objective criticism. After my third viewing, in which I watched it with a more critical eye than I think I've viewed a film with, I wished it was possible to give it a rating of 11/10. Suburra is simply a masterpiece. It is a perfect film. And here's why.

The Plot/Structure:

The story itself is absolutely compelling and is structured in a complex, yet very straight-forward way. The film opens with the Pope confiding in his assistant about his plans to resign as pope. This is the beginning of the apocalypse. The story is told in the seven days leading up to Italy's apocalypse--the resignation of Prime Minister Berlusconi. The narrative follows multiple characters and jumps back and forth between them effortlessly. The editing is absolutely seamless. We follow a corrupt politician named Malgradi (Pierfrancesco Favino), an aging but feared mafia boss known as Samurai (Claudio Amendola), and a ruthless and anxious-to-prove-himself up and coming mafia boss known as Number 8 (Alessandro Borghi) and his heroin-addicted girlfriend and the femme fatale of the story, Viola (Greta Scarano), as they work to turn Number 8's oceanfront territory of Ostia into the Las Vegas of Italy. Along with these characters and their respective and coinciding storylines, there's a separate, yet inevitably connected storyline that follows Sebastiano (Elio Germano) who finds himself inheriting his father's multi-million dollar debt to a psychopathic gypsy crime boss named Manfredi Anacleti (Adamo Dionisi) after his father commits suicide.

The two storylines first cross paths in the opening sequence of the film when the corrupt politician, Malgradi, entertains two prostitutes in a hotel room and one of them dies of an overdose. This pulpy cliche takes a twist when the dead prostitute turns out to be underage and that Malgradi had requested her to be such. Knowing he can't go to the cops, Malgradi leaves the other prostitute, Sabrina (Giulia Gorietti), to take care of the situation. Sabrina calls her friend, Dagger, who happens to be the little brother of Manfredi Anacleti, to help her get rid of the dead prostitute's body. This sets off a chain of events and unintended consequences in which these two storylines continue to cross paths and bump into each other over and over again, each time gathering more and more momentum until finally coming to a devastating and inevitable crash.

It would seem that so many characters and storylines would get confusing and messy, and would not allow for much character development, but this is absolutely not the case. Though it may take paying close attention and likely a second viewing to truly grasp it all and appreciate the complexity of it, it all unfolds absolutely seamlessly and cleanly, as well as giving more than enough time for each character to be fleshed out and complete his or her arc, which brings me to the next thing that makes Suburra great: the characters.

The Characters/Cast:

There isn't a character in Suburra that is not compelling. They are all, each and every one of them, fascinating in their own ways.

We're first introduced to Malgradi, who is the most unlikeable of all the characters, and I mean that in the best possible way. He's unlikeable, but he's delightfully unlikeable, kind of like Leonardo DiCaprio's Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street. Malgradi is a corrupt, greedy, sleazeball of a politician who after work, instead of going home to his wife and son, goes to a discreet hotel to do drugs and bang high-class prostitutes. Suburra takes its title from the red light district of ancient Rome where members of the Senate would go to discreetly indulge in immoral behavior, so Malgradi makes for a very fitting character and sets the tone of the film and spearheads its major themes. When we're introduced to him, he is in the process of pushing a law that will help the Mafia Families of Rome to turn the oceanside district of Ostia into a Roman Las Vegas. With the prime minister's resignation and the subsequent collapse of the Italian government imminent, Malgradi desperately bribes and muscles the votes out of his colleagues while trying to keep his seat in parliament secure. After the underage prostitute overdoses on him, his life quickly begins to spin out of control as he unravels.

The man behind the Ostia project, pulling on the strings and making all the deals, is the most respected and feared man in the Roman underworld--a Mafioso known as Samurai. Samurai is surrounded by mystery, which is what makes him such an intriguing character. He's a quiet, stone-faced, dead-eyed gangster who never says more than he has to, and he rarely has to say much to get his point across. Samurai haunts the film like a ghost. Even when he's not on the screen, you can feel his eerie presence. When he is on the screen, you feel like you're occupying the same space as the Grim Reaper and it's terrifying. Such a character feels like a pulp cliche on the surface, but the actor, Claudio Amendola, the director, and the writers handled this character with such restraint and subtlety that he feels frighteningly and disturbingly real. He's clouded in mystery, yet, somehow, we feel like we know everything about him. We can read his story in his eyes, see it in his actions. It's a very difficult character portray effectively, and such a character has never worked more effectively than it does in Suburra.

At the other end of the Ostia deal is an up and coming boss known as Number 8. Number 8 is, in my opinion, the most fascinating character as well as the most developed. Like Malgradi and Samurai, we are introduced to Number 8 in a pulpy cliche with him beating a man with a sledgehammer in order to get him to sign over his Ostia property. But from there, we quickly learn that Number 8 is far from the stock pulp character he is introduced as. Alessandro Borghi plays Number 8 with an intense vulnerability that forces us to focus on the human side of the gangster. Number 8 is a subtle character, but he oozes badassness without having to actually do anything to show it. Aside from the scene in which we're introduced to him and one other, we never actually see the wrath his eyes and general demeanor promise us, which is refreshing. In your typical gangster film, such a character would be beating people up and murdering people in every other scene. We would be beat over the head with his badassness. Instead, Suburra takes the high road and presents us with the human side of such a character, and that's what makes Number 8 so great. Also, Number 8 is our only clear protagonist in the film. He's the only character with a clear moral code and a relatable motive for who he is and what he does. His backstory is only briefly mentioned, but it's more than enough to understand the character and why he does what he does and what kind of man he's striving to be.

Then there is Viola, Number 8's girlfriend and this neo-noir gangster film's femme fatale. She is the most deceptive character of the bunch, and there is not much that can be said about her without ruining the character, but I will say this much: Greta Scarano is an extraordinary talent and she made Viola one of the most endearing and captivating femme fatales in noir history. Viola should absolutely be considered among the most iconic of such characters.

And finally, we have our villain, Manfredi Anacleti, who is absolutely everything a villain in a gangster film should be. He's ruthless, psychopathic, violent, unhinged, unpredictable, menacing, eccentric, and absolutely fascinating. We have seen characters like him before in many films like this, and I wouldn't say that Adamo Dionisi offers anything new to such a character, but he certainly plays the character perfectly.

Directing:

After this film, Stefano Sollima deserves to be to mentioned among the greats of the genre with the likes of Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. He managed to combine restraint and subtlety with the neo-noir style, creating a truly unique look and visual approach to the genre. He just absolutely nails the dark, apocalyptic tone of the story in every way. I really don't think this film would have been perfect in the hands of any other director. He seemed to know exactly what was necessary, which makes it feel almost minimalist, yet it still feels completely epic and stylish at the same time. Such is the duality of the film and story and characters in general. They all feel larger than life as you're watching, but, at the end of the day, they're really not. They are devastatingly real.

Writing:

I have not read the novel this film is based on, but I certainly plan on it, as I can only imagine it gets even deeper into these characters and themes. The screenwriters did an excellent job of giving us exactly what we need to know about these characters and not giving us too much information. The script is tight and the story is fully realized. While films as epic as this one tend to run into the 150 to 180 minute range, Suburra manages to accomplish everything those films do in just over two hours. While I'm sure much was cut from the script, as is always the case, the writers still did an excellent job here in creating a concise story that feels absolutely epic.

Cinematography:

Paolo Carnera captures the neo-noir style impeccably, but still manages to make it his own and put his stamp on the style. Now, I don't know if it was shot on film or digital (I'm leaning toward digital), but it looks amazing. There were so many shots where I just found myself wanting to pause it and just study it like a painting in a museum. It's just flawless.

Editing:

In a story so complex with so many characters and storylines and themes, it would be easy for it to be messy and confusing. It's not. At all. Patrizio Marone just knew exactly how much time to give each scene and each character, and he managed to blend the storylines from scene to scene in a completely natural way. Such a feat is rarely achieved. Also, you will find no filler scenes in the film. Every scene is absolutely imperative, another feat rarely achieved in film.

The Shootout:

I love that I can just say the shootout and everyone who has seen the film will know exactly what I mean because it's the only one. Sure, there is plenty of violence and killings, but there is only one shootout, and it's freaking amazing and is easily the best shootout we've seen since the iconic downtown LA shootout in Heat. Like the shootout in Heat, the shootout in Suburra is completely over-the-top, yet it manages to feel completely real. It takes place in a supermarket/mall and is exquisitely shot. You're on the edge of your seat from the first shot fired. And the whole thing just comes completely out of the blue. In Heat, we see the shootout coming from a mile away. In Suburra, it comes completely by surprise and in the best possible way. It is one of the many amazing "WTF moments" in this film when it comes to the violence.

The Soundtrack:

While the original score by Pasquale Catalano is very good and very effective, it's M83's contribution to the soundtrack that puts it over the top. I actually never cared for M83 until I saw this film. The songs used just work perfectly. I went out and bought the album the songs came from the day after I saw it. The songs are absolutely overdramatic in the scenes in which they're used, but it just works somehow. And overdramatic soundtracks do not usually work for me in films like this.

There are a few characters and a few technical aspects of the film I have not mentioned, but I assure you they're all top notch. Like I said, I can't think of a negative thing to say about this film. It's simply perfect.

"This life's hard, man, but it's harder if you're stupid!"