Suburra

When parliamentary deputy Filippo Malgradi (Pierfrancesco Favino) once again has fun with prostitutes in a hotel, the fun ends in disaster: an underage prostitute dies of an overdose. Fearing the political and private consequences, he tries to cover up the incident. After all, he's on the verge of pushing through a multi-million dollar construction project for the powerful Godfather Samurai (Claudio Amendola) that could advance his political career while expanding the Mafia's power in Rome. At first, everything goes according to plan. But then the notorious Anacleti clan gets wind of the construction project and wants a piece of the pie. Suddenly Malgradi is being blackmailed and Samurai is forced to bring out the big guns. And what has been cleverly played out in the background between various corrupt powers is now played out openly on the streets of Rome.

With Suburra, director Stefano Sollima (Gomorrah - The Series) delivers a first-rate mafia thriller. Sollima traces the entanglement of the Mafia, family clans, politicians and church dignitaries in a deadly mix of corruption, drugs and violence in a gripping, entertaining and cleverly constructed manner. The inexorable downward spiral, in which not only Malgradi is drawn in, provides enormous tension despite the often rather restrained staging. When it gets down to it, then it really gets down to it, which is why the thriller is not for the faint-hearted.

The world that is created here is so complex and so full of potential that it will be continued in 2017 as the first Italian in-house production for the streaming service NETFLIX. Now, because of this, however, there's no need to fear that Suburra will merely serve as a pilot episode for the series to come. Sollima has created a coherent film, whose various storylines are largely concluded, but in the end still offer the possibility to be followed up and expanded. The individual narrative threads are well fleshed out, but occasionally run the risk of getting lost in the larger context. For example, there is a large part of the film where Malgradi doesn't appear at all and you almost forget about the death of the young prostitute because of the many events that come after. But whenever such a thing is the case, Sollima puts the pieces of the puzzle together very skillfully, resulting in a very coherent overall picture.

Sollima, who is currently shooting the sequel to the great thriller Sicario, has perfectly compressed the extremely complex novel by Carlo Bonini and Giancarlo De Cataldo and has turned it into an all-around gripping thriller. Thrilling, bloody, bitterly evil and atmospherically tightly staged - a Mafia epic in a class of its own. For this there is clearly one: Absolutely worth seeing!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp