This is a Netflix original movie made in Italian. It's the fifth most popular
(i.e. most watched) film on Netflix in the UK today. Interestingly, six out of
the top 10 films are Christmas films. Sigh.....
The film begins in Trentino, an area in the north of Italy. I said that the
film is in Italian, but there's occasional German dialogue spoken in the
early scenes. As you may know, German is the main language spoken in northern
Italy, but the film's primary characters are bilingual and speak Italian
among themselves.
Santo works as a lumberjack. He lives a peaceful life with his wife Ingrid and
his 18-year-old daughter Sofia. He has a phobia of having his photo taken, but
while he's repairing his car's wing mirror Sofia takes a sneaky snapshot and
posts it to Instagram with the text "My badass Dad driving off-road". Innocent
enough, but miles away in Milan facial recognition software flags the photo as
someone the Mafia is looking for. Two killers are sent to his house. They
mistakenly kill his brother-in-law, thinking it's him. Ingrid also dies in the
attack.
As we soon find out, Santo is a former Mafia hitman who's been living under a
false name for 20 years. He takes Sofia to Milan, where he proceeds to get
revenge, first on the two killers, then on the whole Mafia organisation, all
the way up to its boss. A sub-plot is Sofia's development from a naive
teenager into a killer just as ruthless as her father.
Despite having some good ideas, this isn't a great film. It seems to be a
patchwork of themes taken from other films. I immediately recognised the
similarities with
"John Wick"
and
"Leon"
– Sofia even has hair like Mathilda – but my son-in-law
Mehdi, who knows the genre better than me, named other films that it also borrows
from. I have nothing against plagiarism in films, if it's done well, but in
this case the end result is only average quality.
The final scene hints at a sequel. If there's a sequel, I shan't watch it at
home, but there's a good chance I'll see it in a future visit to my daughter.
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