Reviews

The movie is visually well-made, albeit the storytelling lies on the "tell, don't show" side.

This movie is the first one I know of which talks about the foibe massacres, and it should be appreciated for talking about this subject.

The way the story is told is biased, as if Mussolini's Pola speech, Sisak, or Jasenovac, and the fascist cruelties like the blinding of Ruza Petrovic never existed. The fascist occupation is shown as a peaceful and bloodless field trip; only the Fascist Italianization is shown in the movie, and consequently the killing of fascists and Italians has a flavor of a cruel, unprovoked aggression. It was cruel, for sure, but unprovoked? Not so sure about it.

To be clear, it is completely legit to condemn the crimes of a totalitarism, be it the fascist regime or Tito's communist regime. What I find unjust is to show the reaction of an oppressed population, while deliberately omitting the action (the action being mass murders, deportations and war crimes against civilians) that lead to the reaction, and even depicting those responsible of said action as cool, disciplinate, peaceful guys.

But, as I said, this is the first movie about this subject, and it should be appreciated for this.

Despite its revisionist nature, it is an improvement on the even more biased TV series "Il cuore nel pozzo" which preceded it on the same subject.

If the trend will be the same, hopefully, the voice of historians will cover the omissions of the neo-fascist fanbase, and less biased movies may come in the future.

The movie per se is not a bad movie, especially for its plot. Sadly, the plot is exactly the same as the German movie "Er Ist Wieder Da", of which this film should be a "remake".

Rather than a remake, the film looks like a tremendous copy, probably made with the hope of taking advantage of an idea which clearly was successful, speaking of earnings.

It could have been interesting if the movie, for instance, started with the same situation of its German "brother", but evolved differently. Instead, avery single situation, and every single evolution in the plot is taken from Er Ist Wieder Da. Basically, it's the same film with switched characters.

This said, let's ignore the terrible feeling of dejà vu which impends over the movie.

A (very) positive note is for the acting skills of the starring actor Massimo Popolizio, who with great ability reminds Mussolini in his gestures and language.

A negative note is for the co-starring actor, Francesco Matano, who apparently is not capable of being another character but himself. One could wonder if the choice of an actor with such arguable acting skills could be related just to his popularity as a (former?) web-star, in the hope of selling more tickets, without taking great care of the quality of the product.