If you still remember Nino Manfredi in the famous film by Ettore Scola, if you think Quentin Tarantino is a great contemporary director and if you enjoyed Jeeg Robot, this is the film for you. We are talking about “Ugly and bad”, directed by newcomer Cosimo Gomez, which has only been in theaters for a few days.
Cinema has long accustomed us to reading, to seeing, the representation of social life, of human beings, caught in their most extreme manifestations of feelings and behaviors. It is no coincidence that one of the most successful genres concerns the war where the more bloody images are visible, the greater the popularity it receives. It is still no coincidence that we have mentioned Tarantino and it is sufficient to recall the two volumes of Kill Bill to review images and extreme situations that have made narrative violence the figure of his appreciation among the general public. It has been written that the secret of a story, whether written or filmed, lies in the author's ability to skilfully mix the three big Ss: Sex, Blood and Money. In this film the ingredients are all there and are mixed in an excellent way. Sometimes it is right to add a fourth S: the Dream which, in this case, could be that of social, cultural and physical redemption.
The story concerns a robbery, ugly and vulgar, by a gang that cannot be imagined as worse. We are in the worst Roman periphery, degraded, unfinished (the images of Calatrava's Vela are noteworthy, a monument to waste and administrative inefficiency) where people live on the extreme edges of society. The dream is always economic redemption and the occasion is a bank robbery where a "swallow" owned by a ruthless gang of Asian criminals has been deposited. The characters, all lumped together, doesn't make for a good one. Each one, in one way or another, exposes the worst of what humanity can represent. Yet, in their own way, in their diversity, in their ruthlessness they can't be uglier than the context in which they live.
"It's not difficult to be different ... it's really difficult to be the same" one of the most significant phrases of the film, moreover said in one of the funniest sequences. The events are intertwined with twists and turns that continually displace and it is really difficult to guess how it will end. Sometimes exhilarating, sometimes impressive, often emotional, the film flows like a pleasure that rarely happens for an Italian production. Guessed characters - a great Claudio Santamaria - tough dialogues, violent images, accelerated rhythms, excellent editing, impeccable screenplay make this film one of the best products of this film season. Unfortunately, unlike other Italian films of a very different caliber and of little value, it has not had a good promotion and runs the risk of being unjustly penalized at the box office.
The title takes up the well-known Ugly, dirty and bad of '76 and it doesn't seem that only 40 years have passed. The suburbs of every large metropolis continue to be unlivable and inhumane. It is also right to recall the film that in some way paved the way for this genre, all Italian and perhaps very Roman: Jegg Robot, by Gabriele Mainetti, which has received so much success, with merit, in a completely self-referential national scene, a little sad and staid.
