Black Souls (2015) Movie Critic Review

Drama, Hollywood, Movie Review,

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Black Souls (2015) Movie Critic Review
Runtime:     103 min
Official Site:     http://vitagraphfilms.com/black_souls/
Production:     Rai Cinema
Genre:     Drama
Countries:     France, Italy
Language:     Italian
Director:      Francesco Munzi
Stars:        Marco Leonardi, Peppino Mazzotta, Fabrizio Ferracane

Black Souls (2015) Critic Review: The story of three brothers, the sons of a shepherd, close to the ndrangheta and of their divided soul.

IMDB By 7.1 : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3894190

Black Souls Movie Review by MDBReviews  

The mountains of the Aspromonte, in southern Italy, are wreathed by apparitions: a fine, dim fog that ascents from the Ionian and Tyrrhenian oceans and makes a go at pouring up the flanks of Montalto, its most elevated top. Joined by the distressed crash of the chimes around the necks of the since a long time ago haired goats that brush on its blue-dark inclines, it could practically be the kingdom of the dead.

This is the supremely eerie setting for much of Black Souls, a shaded, slow-burning crime drama from the Italian director Francesco Munzi. The film centres on three brothers from the ‘Ndrangheta crime syndicate in Calabria, and though it begins in bright, modern, chilly Amsterdam, as the handsome, charismatic Luigi (Marco Leonardi, teenage Totò from Cinema Paradiso, all grown up) brokers a drug deal with a Spanish smuggler, fate sucks him southwards, back to the mountains of his ancestors, where a grand tragedy is about to unfold.

In Milan, the intelligently dressed, cool-blooded center sibling, Rocco (Peppino Mazzotta), takes care of the family accounts with his impressive wife (Barbora Bobulova), while back in Calabria, the eldest, Luciano (Fabrizio Ferracane), has withdrawn from the syndicate to crowd goats in a disintegrating mountain town.Leo (Giuseppe Fumo), Luciano’s disenchanted 20-year-old son, pitches up in Milan and demands Rocco and Luigi induct him into the real family business. But Leo’s quick temper reawakens a long-slumbering feud with another venerable crime family, and soon the crisis swells to take in two generations and many more lives.

That strange, conflicted tone of "operatic realism" that the critic and essayist Phillip Lopate found in the films of Luchino Visconti also runs through the core of Munzi’s film: there’s an almost theatrical grandeur to the plot, which was adapted from a novel by Gioacchino Criaco, but moment-to-moment it zings with realism.

Fanatics of Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah, which recounted a significantly more multifaceted story of the Camorran wrongdoing syndicate from Naples, 200 miles up the coast, may discover this just as exciting, if far less rushed (like Garrone, Munzi utilizes non-proficient local people in supporting parts to expand the film's authenticity). Also, in its investigation of the amazingness of family when the chips are down, there are clear examinations to be drawn with Francis Ford Coppola's first Godfather film. This is Munzi's third picture, and one that ought to by all rights win him a grateful worldwide group of onlookers.


Tages: Black Souls Movie Reviews, Reviews: Black Souls, Black Souls Review, Growing Up and Other Lies 2015 Reviews, Black Souls 2015 Trailer