Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Palermo, Sicily, 1980. Mafia member Tommaso Buscetta decides to move to Brazil with his family fleeing the constant war between the different clans of the criminal organization. But when, after living several misfortunes, he is forced to return to Italy, he makes a bold decision that will change his life and the destiny of Cosa Nostra forever.
Marco Bellocchio's account of Tommaso Buscetta is a gripping, densely plotted crime epic anchored by Pierfrancesco Favino's towering, career-best performance. The plot is genuinely complex and engrossing, navigating decades of Mafia politics, betrayal, and courtroom drama with considerable skill — the trial sequences are especially riveting. Favino commands every scene, lending Buscetta real moral ambiguity and gravity. Cinematography is competent and occasionally striking but rarely transcends the functional; it serves the story without distinguishing itself. Novelty is moderate: while the Italian Mafia has been extensively chronicled, Bellocchio's focus on the pentito perspective and the mechanics of institutional confrontation gives the film a distinctive angle, though it doesn't reinvent the genre. The ending — covering Buscetta's later years and death — is dignified and thematically coherent but somewhat diffuse, lacking the punch of the film's central courtroom passages.