To me, this movie is perfection.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

In the countryside of Italy, there is a feud between two families of kidnappers and the boy Vito (Manuel Colao) escapes from the slaughter of his family by the other family hiding under his bed. Before dying, his father advises him to warn his older brother that is hidden in a cave. When Vito arrives there, he finds his brother and a boy called Simone that had been kidnapped by his family dead. He finds a backpack with Simone's address in Rome and he decides to travel to Rome to meet his cousin Orlando (Lucio Zagaria) to flee from the killers that are hunting him down. Orlando gives a pack to Vito to keep for him and he puts in the backpack. Soon Orlando is murdered by the killers and Vito decides to seek out Vito's parents. When he meets them, the disturbed mother Marta Rienzi (Francesca Neri) wants to keep Vito with them, while her husband Davide Rienzi (Jacques Perrin) does not believe in him and decides to pay the ransom to retrieve his son. "La corsa dell'innocente" is a great Italian thriller based on a dark period of Italian history when there were abductions of wealthy people and even politicians. Through the long journey of an innocent orphan victim of a war between two families of kidnappers, the director Carlo Carlei exposes the drama of a family that had the only son kidnapped by a gang. In addition to the great story and performances, the film shows beautiful landscapes and monuments in Italy together with a wonderful music score. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "O Vôo do Inocente" ("The Flight of the Innocent")

Italy went through a wave of kidnapping not long ago where wealthy citizens, or their children, were taken away by professional bandits. Most of the people behind this type of crime were from the Calabria area. In fact, it was an industry where some poor people without scruples stood to make a lot of money by extorting rich Italians with the crime they were committing. These evil men would keep the unfortunate victims hidden and would only return them to their families when they received payment. Some times the kidnappers killed their prey when something went wrong.The film concentrates on two enemy families of kidnappers. When Vito's father kills two opposing members of another gang, their family comes to get revenge and kills six members of the young boy's family. Vito runs away to go look for a brother at a cave, where he discovers a boy, who has been kidnapped, lying dead. When he discovered the boy, he also found a knapsack with an address printed in it, which he assumes is the dead boy's.The film follows Vito as he flees from the enemy that wants to kill him in amazing fashion. This peasant boy, who probably hasn't left his backward area, finds uncanny ways to avoid being killed and outsmarts the guys that are pursuing him. Eventually, he ends up at the house of the dead boy, where the distraught mother believes her kidnapped son has returned home, to the horror of her husband, who sees the truth.This Italian film, directed by Carlo Carlei, is a document about that era of that tragic period in the country. Mr. Carlei paces his story well in the way he sets the chase of the boy as he tries to evade his pursuers. Manuel Colao is perfect as the young boy. Francesca Neri and Jacques Perrin are seen as the parents of the kidnapped boy.The film will not disappoint because it shows the sure hand of a director, Carlo Carlei, who takes us for an exciting ride.

Although from a cinematography the production is good, the story and the actors are in doubt. First the story: it is about a kid from a crime family in the deep south that escapes from a deeply agrarian society to the heavily services-oriented north. Well, sorry to tell you, but the deep south as it is mythologized in the Godfather movies, doesn't exist anymore. Everybody has a cellphone now, nobody wants to be a Sheppard anymore, everybody wants to have an office job. The story is highly simplistic and idiomatic, kind of a cute story of a sweet looking kid with bad guys around him. Then the actors: the parents of the kidnapped child are "acting" the part that it is so obvious. When they see the child's school backpack, the knee to it, pick it up, and embrace it. So obvious, that it is classic "B" movie, and so predictable, more for a melodrama aired in soap-opera afternoons. Even how the director directed the shots has some unnatural feel: when the kid emerges from the crypt in the cemetery, he is made to turn his head slightly and then express surprise to discover there is a vehicle. It is as if the kid didn't have peripheral vision. Such scene direction by putting emphasis on frontal screen scape is typical of television direction of simple and uncomplicated easy-to-do productions. To have it here just shows how simplistic that was. But it was the only time it happened, otherwise, the other scenes are more dynamic

Honestly is one of my all time 10 best italian movies ever. I cant understand how a director like Carlo Carlei it`s not working in Hollywood after this one, like G.Tornattore o R.Bennigni this movie is a great movie and also very original, touching and well shooted. E X C E L E N T italian movie E X E L E N T Carlei "avanti caro"