gkeith_1 I am watching this in a film class at university. Have seen only part of it, so far. I have studied Italian language, and could pick up some words in this Roman dialect -- and am happy that there are English subtitles (though "ing" is replaced by "in'", as in "Lucy, you've got some 'splainin' to do," lol).All the actors seem believable in their parts. The women are beautiful. Gorgeous Cinzia enjoys making that money! So what if all of these men are too stupid to stop throwing all that beautiful money at her!! Libano-Lebanese is dedicated, if devious. His demise is cruel and abrupt, but they say that what goes around comes around. The police detective cozying up to Cinzia and using her sensual pleasures to get information on our bad guys was just too odd yet delicious. Who's the real manipulator here?? Flashback: early in the film, the Italian-language-singing children are out joyriding and up to no good. Out the car door goes someone they are tired of. At least, that's what I thought. The children grow up, to be wannabe 'dangerous' criminals. Then the laughs begin; some parts of this movie are actually funny. The bad guys actually have hearts of gold. The problem is that they have to have gold in order to live, and not one has education or a real type of employment. Mayhem ensues! Fast car lovers, pay attention.Some events stand out in my recollection: Robbery of Baron Rosellini, and then doing away with him; making him look alive for the newspaper headline photograph plus kidnapping ruse. Blowing up the train station was ultra-genius, at least in the minds of the criminals. The maimed/mutilated victims of the explosion were gruesome and vomitous to view, and the scene really looked real. Kidnapping plot against the president was insane, yet ended in the poor man's demise.This movie has sex, violence, gambling, prostitution, money-grubbing and arguing among thieves, not to mention friendship and loyalty. Where is Mother Church in all this? Does She approve of all these ruinations of the lives of young people? Will she receive their prayers to be forgiven for their wasted lives in order to welcome them into Heaven when they surely meet their what-goes-around-comes-around predictable demise? I thought all those Italians were good Roman Catholics. Trouble is, the God of Ill-Gotten Money, Drugs, Violence, Murders, Hookers and Fast Cars is fighting for the attention of the poverty-stricken, uneducated children of Mother Church.Where is the singing and dancing in this movie, that you readers know I like so much? Well, singing is here, in the early part of the movie. There is a nice soundtrack. As far as the dancing goes, maybe it is found in the dodging of bullets, or better yet the dancing around of the knife in the back or through the abdomen. UGH. Remember that these are all actors, and blood-guts-gore are fake, and also remember that the characters' lives are a dance-to-the-death in order to, oddly, stay alive as long as possible. They need to tap dance like Mr. Bojangles. 10/10

ciellemiller While reading the other reviews of this film, I was surprised at how many negative responses it got. For one thing, people who complain that it was too long and seemed like a miniseries...the two and a half hour version WAS a miniseries, the cinema version was epic but not that epic. I actually prefer the long version. It is true that if you watch this trying to test your Italian language skills you will be hard put to understand most of it unless you have lived in Rome. I wouldn't have compared this film to the godfather or scarface, it is very much less Hollywood. The feeling of overwhelmed connection between crime and politics, the sense of no way out, the fact that the characters seem not to be particularly penitent, all of this is very accurate, it truly does evoke modern Rome. We are so used to mafia movies, big movies that show a rise to the top, very American Dream style, then the inevitable fall, because the characters are bad and have to be punished. This film is beautiful because it is so far outside of American morality. The characters die horrible deaths not to pay for their crimes, but simply because that is a risk of the line of work they are in. The deaths reflect the characters. Lebanese started a ruthless street gang in a dirty garage, and dies full circle, on the street, no pomp or circumstance. Ice, who always seemed to be scratching at the door of escape and salvation, dies without ever reaching it, on the steps of a church. This is significant, even beautiful, but don't give too much weight to the location. There are over 400 churches in Rome. The odds of being shot in front of one if you are going to get shot in a public place are quite good. I have seen Rome's criminal underbelly firsthand. While it is no longer what it was in the 1970's, it is still a world with no master, no real mafia rule, and a great deal of political influence on its higher levels. This is a beautiful film. While watching it next time, listen to and enjoy the cadence. Romans have a beautiful way of speaking. I also feel like people haven't given quite enough credit to Santamaria's Dandy. He is one of the best young Italian actors around in my opinion, and he plays his insecure, irritating, and sometimes hateful character with such great tenderness and vulnerability.

demyan2 ... and by that, I mean a celebrated actor with a string of macho roles (Plachido's would be Corrado Cattani from "La Piovra") who becomes a director and makes well-crafted but unimaginative, by-the-book, predictable movies.In this category, "Romanzo Criminale" easily takes the cake from "Gran Torino", taking on board every cinematic cliché it can. I hope someone catalogs them all; let me get the ball rolling with (a) Prostitute With A Heart Of Gold, (b) Lyrical Hero Dying On Church Steps, Viewed From Above, (c) Lyrical Hero's Girlfriend Not Knowing About His Life Of Crime, Heartbroken But Forgiving, after (d) Lyrical Hero Writes To Her From Prison Cell Every Day, (e) Lyrical Hero Suffering From a Fatal Disease That Does Nothing To Reduce His Smoking Looks, etc.The reason that I remember Ice's story line best is that it's most heavily coated in cheese, and evokes the closest association with the films that "Romanzo Criminale" reminded me of - Russian "Brigada" and "Bumer". (Ice is a male-model version of Vladimir Vdovichenko's character in either). It can't be good when you see a 2008 film that feels derivative compared to a 10-year old Russian TV series, itself a cliché-ridden low-IQ wannabe. Oh Michele Plachido, why didn't you hire a real screenwriter? At least he did a great job on casting; the actors (and especially actresses - Anna Mouglalis, who has the more interesting role, is a stand-out) are all great, elevating a run-of-the-mill film to a higher level.

johnnyboyz Romanzo Criminale, or Crime Novel in English, reminded me of recent Scorsese film The Departed; a film that's fast, smooth, slick and glamorous but knows where it stands on the line that on one side actually contains glamorisation. I may not be overly familiar with the bulk of the cannon that is Italian crime cinema, but Crime Novel seems to want to appeal to the broadest possible audience; there is a showy sense of colour and energy, a feeling of the broad and of the epic when, in personal terms, low-grade and gritty content always works best for me. I think Crime Novel has the necessary characters to tell a 'proper' crime story what with prostitutes, petty thugs, drug dealers and kidnappers but it remembers all too often to 'have fun' with its subject matter. Had the characters been slightly less-believable and more akin to something from a Guy Ritchie attempt, the 'clash' I felt was there might not have been.Regardless, and despite this wavering sense in relation to content, the film feels good enough to warrant a pretty strong recommendation; and film that doesn't necessarily know its foundations but knows exactly where it wants to go when it's off and running. The film covers a number of petty Italian criminals throughout the 1970s and briefly onwards from there. They are Ice, Lebanese and Dandy; three kids that come of age in the 1960s when they steal a car, briefly avoid the police and then see their fourth friend die as one of them is arrested and jailed. The film gets across the direction the makers will take it down very early on and in some style, introducing the leads in a flashy and sexy manner; many will have issues with young 'gangsters' inhabiting the screen with their 'cool' nick-names such as 'Ice' and so forth. Crime Novel carries the same tone as, and certainly takes inspiration from, pieces like City of God and any Guy Ritiche venture into this genre, but it does fall short of those examples.It's oddly symbolic that a kidnapping of a certain someone would act as the launching of the soon to be enlarged group; it signifies a taking of something for personal gain, a swiping of a person that gives them the opportunity to swipe the city for themselves. These guys party hard by night in a carefree and obnoxious manner, they stab people by day; something the film wants us to understand very early on when that sense of juxtaposition is apparent as is a feeling of low-level crime, a sense that these people are not afraid of what they do and may well inhabit public spaces, continue with whatever it is they enjoy and might well be never more than a few yards away from you.The film lays its goals down in a pretty clear cut fashion when the leader of this rising group makes reference to the Roman empire, he wants something large; powerful and something to be feared as the result of all this. The notion is in debt more toward American crime films of old, Scarface and The Godfather in particular as this study of the hierarchy is set up. But Crime Novel doesn't want to be about one man as much as it does rather a few. Throughout the duration of the picture, characters will fall in love; speak of eloping; aid in the taking over of entire drug empires and go on journeys of psychological paranoia while law enforcers around them go on an ever-escalating pursuit of these criminals, that see themselves dice with temptation and death mere scenes apart. The film even takes time to incorporate Italy's 1982 World Cup win.So you've got a lot going on. The film doesn't hang about, and I don't think it really cares whether we connect with all of the characters in the piece, just so long as our attention is drawn to one or two. What acts as an interesting element to all of this is the character of Patrizia (Mouglalis), the prostitute and lone female figure amidst this male dominated world and genre. The sexual tension between her and leading law-enforcer Scialoja (Accorsi), which is displayed in certain scenes, comes across as something out of another film entirely – the odd thing is, most of these scenes are more interesting than most others as a sort of side-show of lust and temptation, always drawing you into the criminal world. The character of Patrizia, I suppose, acts as a bridge between them; those being 'right' and 'wrong'.If most scenes in the film are raw and enjoy the 'in-your-face' delivery, then the scenes Scialoja and Patrizia share carry a certain amount of slow burning energy that the others lack. If the performances of Mouglalis and Accorsi are impressive, it's because they have something raw enough to work with, which is slightly more than the rest of the cast can really lay claim to. Importantly, Crime Novel isn't a glorification. By the end, the film has gone so far that it thinks it can branch off into a revenge tale, and given its sheer energy and ruthlessness in telling a sprawling crime piece, it sort of earns the right if the priorities are correct – which they are. Made with energy and a fair amount of efficiency, Romanzo Criminale delivers without romancing criminals, too much.