Roberto Saviano wrote a great book about how the Napoli-area crime "system" was modernizing itself. The System did this by globalizing itself - partnering (unofficially) with major fashion houses, for example, making drug retail more friendly and suburban, and using its military arm to protect its carefully constructed, often brilliantly executed economic interests.
The gangster stuff in the book is entirely the effect of the system - the neocapitalist crime system that operates globally, that ties southern Italy not just to Columbia but to Bulgaria and Romania - you really have to read the book, which is vivid and also comprehensive.
The movie simply disappears The System. None of the causal forces detailed in the book survive. This is the most blatant and inexcusable dumbing down of book into a movie that I've seen in years - inexcusable because the book IS the system and not the sh-thead gangsters.
You don't really need to see the 425th remake of Boyz n the Hood (which was a better movie than this). You don't really need to see another treatment of the "culture of poverty," the "underclass" depicted as aimless sociopaths. This film has as much insight as your average episode of Law and Order, so watch a rerun instead.
I can't believe the book author Saviano gets a writing credit for this dumbness. I hope it was a straight payoff, no work involved.
The book was journalism. This film just makes up whatever it wants. The worst example of this is the butchery of the book's most moving scene, when the boy from the hood who is actually a brilliant couturier, and sews dresses that end up on A-list stars in Hollywood, freaks out when he sees one of his dresses on Angelina Jolie (pointlessly renamed as another famous actress). In the movie Pasquale (who is randomly 20 years older than the book's counterpart), sees the movie's version AFTER he already made the career decision that the Angelina Jolie scene produces in the book, and he has no emotional reaction. Same goes for his relationship to the Chinese workers - a time-consuming, sensationalist escalation of what in the book was a simple and attractive gesture.
Calling All Film Directors: dumb isn't fun. Dumb is boring. Stop it.
The gangster stuff in the book is entirely the effect of the system - the neocapitalist crime system that operates globally, that ties southern Italy not just to Columbia but to Bulgaria and Romania - you really have to read the book, which is vivid and also comprehensive.
The movie simply disappears The System. None of the causal forces detailed in the book survive. This is the most blatant and inexcusable dumbing down of book into a movie that I've seen in years - inexcusable because the book IS the system and not the sh-thead gangsters.
You don't really need to see the 425th remake of Boyz n the Hood (which was a better movie than this). You don't really need to see another treatment of the "culture of poverty," the "underclass" depicted as aimless sociopaths. This film has as much insight as your average episode of Law and Order, so watch a rerun instead.
I can't believe the book author Saviano gets a writing credit for this dumbness. I hope it was a straight payoff, no work involved.
The book was journalism. This film just makes up whatever it wants. The worst example of this is the butchery of the book's most moving scene, when the boy from the hood who is actually a brilliant couturier, and sews dresses that end up on A-list stars in Hollywood, freaks out when he sees one of his dresses on Angelina Jolie (pointlessly renamed as another famous actress). In the movie Pasquale (who is randomly 20 years older than the book's counterpart), sees the movie's version AFTER he already made the career decision that the Angelina Jolie scene produces in the book, and he has no emotional reaction. Same goes for his relationship to the Chinese workers - a time-consuming, sensationalist escalation of what in the book was a simple and attractive gesture.
Calling All Film Directors: dumb isn't fun. Dumb is boring. Stop it.