Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Exposed to radioactive waste, small-time crook Enzo gains super-strength. A misanthropic, introverted brute, he uses his powers for personal gain until he meets Alessia, a mentally ill girl who believes Enzo is the hero from her favorite anime, Steel Jeeg.
They Call Me Jeeg is a genuinely distinctive entry in the superhero genre — a gritty, grounded Italian crime film that filters the superhero origin story through the lens of Roman criminal underworld realism and anime obsession. Claudio Santamaria delivers a remarkably committed, nuanced performance as the brutish, reluctant anti-hero Enzo, and Luca Marinelli is electrifyingly unhinged as the villain. The film's novelty is its strongest suit: the collision of camorra crime drama with superhero mythology, filtered through a mentally ill girl's anime fantasy, is a singular conception rarely seen in European genre cinema. The plot is well-structured but follows a fairly predictable arc of reluctant heroism and humanization through love. Cinematography is competent and naturalistic — Rome's periphery is rendered with gritty authenticity — but not visually inventive. The ending is emotionally satisfying though somewhat conventional for the genre.