In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

As the history of modern (1970-95) Italy plays out - the kidnapping of Aldo Mora, the Bologna bombing etc. - a ruthless gang of outsiders are successfully muscling in on Rome's lucrative drug and gambling rackets. Meanwhile, a hard-nosed detective is tracking their activities, seeking evidence to put them away. And lurking even deeper in the background are State black ops figures who may or may not be manipulating both the criminals and the events themselves.I was expecting the sort of cheap crime exploitation movie that proliferated in Italian cinema back in the 70s, but this is a different, much more ambitious and better type of movie. Crime Novel is structured very much like an Italian version of American Gangster. It has the same intimate yet gritty feel, the same long slow story arc, playing out over years against a background of world events; the dedicated cop who seems like the only police official who sees his duty as catching criminals rather than taking bribes; and drug dealers who see themselves as businessmen providing a service rather than villains, and most of time they are. The focus is clearly on the gang. They grew up together in the streets. Crime and friendship are what holds them together. They have strong loyalties to those closest to them but can be ruthless to those who oppose them. Individually, they have frailties, but together they are formidable. The script is structured to provide each of the central characters with plenty of screen time, and its strong dialogue and intimate tone create very multi-dimensional and mostly sympathetic portraits.The resulting movie is very watchable and a worthy companion piece to movies like Carlito's Way, Scarface and American Gangster. Recommended.

The most famous criminal within Italy is easily the Mafia, but here is a film that shows a crime organisation that was not link them.Set in the 70s and 80s Romanzo Criminale tells the story of three friends Ice (Kim Rossi Stuart), Lebanese (Riccardo Scamarcio) and Dandy (Claudio Santamaria) who in the 70s rise up the Rome underworld, forming a gang to kidnap wealthy people, drug dealing and murdering the heads of rival gangs. They quickly raise to the top, with Ice and Dandy finding love on the way, Ice with a pretty young tutor Roberta (Jasmine Trinca) and Dandy with an up-market escort Patrizia (Anna Mouglalis). The gang have to face a number of threats, from Communist Terrorists, the Italian government and the very demanded police commissioner Scialoja (Stefano Accorsi).Romanzo Criminale is a very well acted film, with excellent performances across the board. Many of the actors in the film should have a good future ahead of them. There a good action set pieces, with Michele Placido being very skilled behind the camera. The film is violence but not OTT. He pacing can be a little slow at times, but he knew what he was doing, showing both the gangster side of the film with the more personal and tender moments. However, his opening credit scene felt too much like a Guy Ritchie film and should have avoided that. They is a strong script, with a lot of elements and subplots throughout the film. They is a quite a lot to follow so needs a few viewings. The soundtrack is also very notable.A very worthy film.

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.

I read the book some years ago, and was really excited that a movie was going to be made out of it. The plot was just perfect and the characters strong enough to work well on screen. Well the movie is quite disappointing, and not because of the script, which in a way does work (except maybe for a foreign audience who will not catch all the political implications of the movie), but for Michele Placido's poor television style of directing and (mainly) for the choice of (most) the actors. These guys should be the worst criminals Rome had ever seen, people you would not have the guts to see in the eyes, but the actors chosen are all the cool and beautiful teenager idols of Italian cinema, surely good actors, but not in the right place this time. This movie could have been a great opportunity to finally export some good Italian cinema...i'm afraid we'll have to wait much more!