(Plot spoilers ahead.) Violence erupts in a shepherd's field in the Italian region of Calabria. Several men are shot and killed. Later the entire family of the men responsible for the slaughter is itself brutally wiped out in a revenge massacre, except for the young Vito, hiding under the mattress of a bed. He spends the rest of the movie evading his family's murderers, who need to get him out of the way.
Vito realizes his own family was part of a kidnapping crime involving a young boy (son of wealthy Sienese parents). The two murderous and murdered crime families had clashed over the issue. The kidnapped child has been killed, but the surviving criminals still want to collect the ransom, asserting that the child is alive.
Vito runs away, on foot, by train and truck, any way he can, seeks sanctuary with a relative in Rome (and his girlfriend), until he too is killed. He is questioned by the police, sent to a safe haven, apprehended by a gang member, escapes, continues his noble quest to seek the parents of the slain boy, to tell them what happened, to return to them the ransom money he had found, to tell them not to pay a ransom because their son is dead. At heart he is engaged in a quest to seek new loving replacement parents, to become a substitute son to "replace" the son the Sienese couple has lost.
He finds the family's home, with information found in the kidnapped child's bookbag. He barges into the house. The lost child's mother (Francesca Neri) finds this young intruder, takes a liking to the lad, going so far as tenderly bathing the boy and outfitting him with her missing son's clothes. The father (Jacques Perrin) refuses to believe his boy is dead, and negotiates with those still seeking the ransom. This final confrontation between father and criminals causes Vito to be nearly killed but because of him the villains are subsequently snuffed out by the police in a final violent shootout.
Vito dreams of a world where all can live in harmony, children are safe, and blood feuds are unknown. Would that were so.
This is a beautifully made film with moments of great excitement and tension and sudden bursts of extreme violence and slaughter that look like out-takes from Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch." Nevertheless, there is a tenderness at the core of the film, which is often very lyrical, sometimes excessively so in long-winded dreamy evocations that pop up from time to time and at the ending. In short, it's a good thriller, with a humane dimension, on a relatively rare topic, the Calabrian Ndrangheta and its record of child-kidnappings.
Performances are uniformly convincing with the remarkable Manuel Colao as the sweetly poetic and shrewdly cautious youngster. Jacques Perrin and Francesca Neri as the kidnapped kid's parents are perfect, and Federico Pacifici is frightening as the deranged scarfaced killer. The direction by Carlo Carlei, whose first film this was, is top-notch.
I used to show this film to high school students of Italian, despite the R-rating (for violence) and it invariably went over very well with the teen audiences. It is of interest to note that the 2003 Italian film "I'm Not Scared" ("Io non ho paura") by Gabriele Salvatores, has a story with a number of similarities to this one.
Vito realizes his own family was part of a kidnapping crime involving a young boy (son of wealthy Sienese parents). The two murderous and murdered crime families had clashed over the issue. The kidnapped child has been killed, but the surviving criminals still want to collect the ransom, asserting that the child is alive.
Vito runs away, on foot, by train and truck, any way he can, seeks sanctuary with a relative in Rome (and his girlfriend), until he too is killed. He is questioned by the police, sent to a safe haven, apprehended by a gang member, escapes, continues his noble quest to seek the parents of the slain boy, to tell them what happened, to return to them the ransom money he had found, to tell them not to pay a ransom because their son is dead. At heart he is engaged in a quest to seek new loving replacement parents, to become a substitute son to "replace" the son the Sienese couple has lost.
He finds the family's home, with information found in the kidnapped child's bookbag. He barges into the house. The lost child's mother (Francesca Neri) finds this young intruder, takes a liking to the lad, going so far as tenderly bathing the boy and outfitting him with her missing son's clothes. The father (Jacques Perrin) refuses to believe his boy is dead, and negotiates with those still seeking the ransom. This final confrontation between father and criminals causes Vito to be nearly killed but because of him the villains are subsequently snuffed out by the police in a final violent shootout.
Vito dreams of a world where all can live in harmony, children are safe, and blood feuds are unknown. Would that were so.
This is a beautifully made film with moments of great excitement and tension and sudden bursts of extreme violence and slaughter that look like out-takes from Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch." Nevertheless, there is a tenderness at the core of the film, which is often very lyrical, sometimes excessively so in long-winded dreamy evocations that pop up from time to time and at the ending. In short, it's a good thriller, with a humane dimension, on a relatively rare topic, the Calabrian Ndrangheta and its record of child-kidnappings.
Performances are uniformly convincing with the remarkable Manuel Colao as the sweetly poetic and shrewdly cautious youngster. Jacques Perrin and Francesca Neri as the kidnapped kid's parents are perfect, and Federico Pacifici is frightening as the deranged scarfaced killer. The direction by Carlo Carlei, whose first film this was, is top-notch.
I used to show this film to high school students of Italian, despite the R-rating (for violence) and it invariably went over very well with the teen audiences. It is of interest to note that the 2003 Italian film "I'm Not Scared" ("Io non ho paura") by Gabriele Salvatores, has a story with a number of similarities to this one.