The Traitor has all the trappings of an indecently immoral entertainment. It's always great to see European films with American-set scenes that weren't shot here. If it’s “Godfather” clichés you want, there’s always “The Godfather.” Read full … It was something that made him lower than the low: hated not merely by the police and the media but his own people, too. Bold, confident film-making … Pierfrancesco Favino as Tommaso Buscetta in The Traitor. arco Bellocchio’s The Traitor is a big, handsomely shot, true-crime gangster movie, ranging over 30 years from the early 1970s to the late 90s, scripted by Bellocchio with screenwriters Valia Santella, Ludovica Rampoldi and Francesco Piccolo. Bellocchio begins his story in medias res, at a huge mafia clan meeting in 1980 theoretically intended as a diplomatic summit, to carve up Italy’s heroin market between them as peacefully as possible, but really as an exercise in tacit threat. By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy Italian mob biopic is courtroom drama with bloody violence. The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre. Who can blame him? Friday July 24 2020, 12.01am, The Times. Tommaso himself seems even-tempered enough, though furious at his young son’s addiction to heroin – the one time in the film the actual effects of his merchandise are shown. Critics Consensus. Italian mob biopic is courtroom drama with bloody violence. 124 reviews. This is not historically accurate; for example, reference is made to the traitor Kim Philby being a member of MI-5, he was in fact MI-6 (Secret Intelligence Service). “The Traitor” is a massive self-contained microcosm: it exists just outside the realm of genre movie conventions and deep inside its unreliable protagonists’ hard-scrambled psyche. It had a beginning, it will have an end." It’s a nightmare; it’s a … A brooding, two-inch-thick porterhouse steak of a movie. It is an extraordinary scene, followed by the mobsters’ ugly gloating and celebrating. Anyway, it’s also an interesting insight into the OSS, which is more or less a predecessor of today’s CIA. 23/05/2019 - CANNES 2019: With his story of the mafia boss-turned-informant Tommaso Buscetta, Italian director Marco Bellocchio once again raises the bar on his own special brand of social cinema. Favino portrays Buscetta as a man struggling with his conscience, not for the crimes he has committed, but because of the storm he knows will rain down on him for breaking years of mafia tradition. [Full review in Spanish]. A complex character study emerges, one that is inherently unflattering (Buscetta is a ruthless killer), in a restlessly intelligent film. But the first episode is muddled and is oddly paced. 23/05/2019 - CANNES 2019: With his story of the mafia boss-turned-informant Tommaso Buscetta, Italian director Marco Bellocchio once again raises the bar on his own special brand of social cinema A legitimately Italian Mafia movie with memoirs, might, mayhem and a running time at least an hour shorter than 'The Irishman.'. Unfortunately, this account of Buscetta’s story doesn’t really give us any answers. Please enter your email address and we will email you a new password. An authentic and very thrilling film about the mafia's world. Read full review On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 84% based on 97 reviews. All rights reserved. But The Traitor is big, bold, confident film-making. 3. 5. stars 3 out of 5 stars. A well-acted and engaging Italian drama about the real-life Italian mafia member who broke the dam on a river of bloody secrets. Rival wiseguy Totò Riina (Calì Nicola) launches a pre-emptive strike against Tommaso’s family members and allies, including Totuccio Contorno (Luigi Lo Cascio) – we get the traditional montage of guys with their faces pressed against the steering wheel behind a cobwebbed windshield. /. Save The story of MI6 mole Oleg Gordievsky (pictured) is told in Ben Macintyre's new book Credit: Rex Drawing on the true story of the White Rose—the resistance movement of young Germans against the Nazi regime—The Traitor tells of one woman who offers her life in the ultimate battle against tyranny, during one of history’s darkest hours. Soon, Tommaso has taken his extended family over to Rio de Janeiro, supervising the Latin American connection in what amounts to commercial exile, but his absence from Italy is a serious mistake. Resists the call of "Godfather" films' commercialism by providing a truer picture of how the Italian mafia really conducts business. As Buscetta, Favino is a terrific presence, charismatic as past Italian tough guys such as Lino Ventura. This Walkthrough will provide some Tips and Tricks for finishing the Review: The Traitor Is an Incident-Rich Farce That Often Pulls Its Punches. Review: Beautiful Something Left Behind Celebrates Symbolism as a Salve for Grief. Forgot your password? Review: The Traitor. Carried by Pierfrancesco Favino's layered central performance. There are some show-stopping scenes in Bellocchio’s handsome true-crime movie about mafia informants, Last modified on Thu 23 Jul 2020 13.43 EDT. This horrific threat is what convinced him to snitch, we are given to understand. The film tells Buscetta’s story, flashing backwards and forwards between his life as a young Palermo guy starting out in crime, to the elderly, morose type in a witness-protection scheme in the United States, paranoically buying semi-automatics at the local supermarket because they were on a special discount. Traitor did a very good job of stepping on the audience's toes with some lines that could've been considered prejudiced, and then catching themselves with actual truths about the war in the Middle East, in addition to religions themselves. Most memorably, it captures what it must be like to live your life looking over your shoulder and, given the brazen nature of the men's appalling crimes, the absolute inevitability of their demise. Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 Also known as The Traitor. The Traitor, this year’s first great movie, counters the moral subversion of Netflix’s The Irishman campaign. The moral ambiguities and questions of legacy, friendship, family and integrity in Marco Bellochio's The Traitor are the strongest points of an ambitious, punishing addition to a long line of films to explore the inner workings of the Cosa Nostra. “The Traitor,” anchored by Pierfrancesco Favino’s shrewd, subtle and volcanic lead performance, is less an exploration of the man’s motives than a chronicle of his actions. and the Terms and Policies, [The Traitor] is a fascinatingly entertaining motion picture centered on a performance from Favino that's pretty darn terrific. John le Carre, the author of the classic spy thrillers "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold," called Ben Macintyre's book "The best true spy story I … He was the important Cosa Nostra guy who astonished everyone by committing the ultimate sin: treason. THE TRAITOR Sony Pictures Classics Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net linked from Rotten Tomatoes by: Harvey Karten Director: Marco Bellocchio The Traitor review — epic Scorsese-esque study of the Sicilian mafia. The Traitor. Favino, a familiar face internationally as a lumpen heavy, gives a galvanising career-best performance... Parts of The Traitor take place in the United States. Copyright © Fandango. The Traitor is acted and directed throughout with confidence and force, but somehow it lacks the lightning-flash of inspiration of something like Scorsese’s Goodfellas – a similar story of mobsters snitching – because it never quite relaxes into the gangsters’ ordinary lives. “The Path of the Ranger” series by Pedro Urvi begins with Book 1, “The Traitor’s Son.” Lasgol is 15 years old, and serves an old grouchy giant of a man, a retired soldier, in a remote cold village in a country that reminds one of Skandinavia. This is an important distinction and not merely pedantic. The website's critical consensus reads: "While it doesn't probe particularly far below the surface of its central character, The Traitor tells its fact-based story with enough energy to entertain". The Traitor is an exploration of betrayal, according to Bellocchio. It is in these sections where Bellocchio is perhaps self-consciously concerned, as a major Italian film-maker, to be seen delivering a definitive cinematic account of an important period of modern Italian life. Bellocchio shows how at this moment the mafia have revealed themselves to be not glamorous warriors, but grotesque and spiteful bullies. Both The Irishman and The Traitor explore how hollow the back half of a criminal life can be. A powerful story well told presages a cloudy future with no silver lining. You may not know Italy’s Maxi Trial from a maxi skirt, but a 150-minute investment in “The Traitor” will compellingly enlighten all who love their mobster movies - like pizza - Sicilian style. For ages 10 and above. His subject is Italy’s sensational anti-mafia Maxi trial of 1986, in which hundreds of Sicilian mobsters were convicted, on the testimony of a tiny number of high-up pentiti, or informers, of which the most important was Tommaso Buscetta, a bulkily intimidating, charismatic presence portrayed here by Italian character actor Pierfrancesco Favino. It has such a rare script that goes against everything we know about conventional mob-genre film rules. Kevin Maher. The attempted shooting of Contorno is white-knuckle stuff, and there is a very good performance from that other Italian acting veteran Luigi Lo Cascio — whom I first saw in Giuseppe Piccioni’s excellent 2001 movie Light of My Eyes. A key episode in Mafia history is documented in this engrossing, patient and unglamorous crime saga. The film has the authoritative air of official history: sometimes brash, sometimes stolid, sometimes with flashes of inspiration and sometimes with long stretches of courtroom dialogue. A biopic that probably represents the best true story of the Italian mafia on the big screen. Perhaps those who think that this episode is a self-serving fantasy of Tommaso’s to justify ratting out his fellow bad guys. A s with Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 mafia opus The Godfather, Marco Bellocchio’s The Traitor is a story about those who inhabit the highest echelons of Cosa Nostra, and it opens on a celebration. Yet it has turned out be oddly flattened. When Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned in Salisbury last year, security measures, including … Marco Bellocchio’s The Traitor is a big, handsomely shot, true-crime gangster movie, ranging over 30 years from the early 1970s to the late 90s, scripted by Bellocchio with screenwriters Valia Santella, Ludovica Rampoldi and Francesco Piccolo. Well, it was certainly a sound instinct to show the courtroom scenes at some length, because however bizarre and chaotic it could be, the court of law is the moral centre of these events. MacIntyre chronicles the life and work of Oleg Gordievsky, one of the wests most effective spies inside the Soviet Union during the cold war. The Best Horror Movies on Netflix Right Now. It's like saying the FBI and the CIA are the same thing. Read Common Sense Media's The Traitor review, age rating, and parents guide. The Best Sci-Fi Movies on Netflix Right Now. Marco Bellocchio’s The Traitor (Il traditore) is his latest slice of unconformist Italian cinema whose mafia tale is a brutal knockout. He seems to be asking, can a man truly change the course of his life, or is it just a pretense? ‘The Traitor’ review: authentic Italian gangster thriller is an offer you shouldn’t refuse 4 You've seen Martin Scorsese's '90s mob epic, but this Italian Mafia drama is the real 'Goodfellas' There really are some show-stopping scenes: perhaps especially when Tommaso and Cristina are taken out over the ocean in separate helicopters and Tommaso is made to watch as his terrified wife is dangled out, about to be dropped. Now he is a supergrass, brought back in first class to Italy to blow the lid. The Traitor is a coolly epic appraisal of a country’s struggle with its dark side rather than a mobbed-up melodrama. Sign up here. Well, it was certainly a sound instinct to show the courtroom scenes at some length, because however bizarre and chaotic it could be, the court of law is the moral centre of these events. by Camillo De Marco. Hide Spoilers. Then there is the notorious murder of the trial judge, Giovanni Falcone (Fausto Russo Alesi), when his car was bombed on the autostrada, and Bellocchio’s camera occupies the interior of his car as it flips up through the air. This calamitous war focuses the minds of law enforcement in Italy, Brazil and the US, and in response to threats to his wife Cristina (Maria Fernanda Cândido), Tommaso realises he has no choice to but to turn state’s evidence. The director also makes a very interesting suggestion towards the end: people like Tommaso want to snitch, because they have a secret craving for their importance to be recognised, and to put the seal on their careers: despite the hate, they want things put on the record. He snitched to the cops. The Traitor focuses on Tommaso Buscetta, the first ‘made man’ to betray his vow of silence to Cosa Nostra and become an informant for the Italian authorities. Film Review: ‘The Traitor’ Questioning the nature of repentance, Marco Bellocchio re-creates the Mafia Maxi Trials when Tomasso Buscetta turned informer in … At any rate, Bellocchio takes the anecdote at face value, and it’s a sensational image. Film. The Spy and the Traitor review – a gripping tale of escape from the USSR Ben Macintyre tells the story of MI6 agent Oleg Gordievsky’s rescue from Moscow in 1985 with elegance and wit Review this title 70 Reviews. [The Traitor] is a fascinatingly entertaining motion picture centered on a performance from Favino that's pretty darn terrific. Pierfrancesco Favino in The Traitor. The film has the authoritative air of official history: sometimes brash, sometimes stolid, sometimes with flashes of inspiration and sometimes with long stretches of courtroom dialogue. Don't have an account? He brings his camera into some fierce, almost reptilian faces, lit by outdoor torches – and maybe he has been influenced by the young(er) master, Paolo Sorrentino. The Traitor is a primary mission in Wasteland 3 that overlaps with Sand in the Gastank. While it doesn't probe particularly far below the surface of its central character, The Traitor tells its fact-based story with enough energy to entertain. Get the freshest reviews, news, and more delivered right to your inbox! It’s a cinematic miracle. The Spy and the Traitor is an excellent spy thriller and documentary in one. Sidney Poitier’s 7 Most Memorable Performances, All Harry Potter Movies Ranked Worst to Best by Tomatometer. and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and Fandango. The Spy and the Traitor, review: the true story of the ultimate Cold War double-agent 4. There isn’t quite enough human interest or incidental detail of the sort that made Goodfellas so unmissable. This obviously takes place in the dialog of the characters, particularly those of Cheadle and Guy Pearce. Survivors of a WW2 resistance group meet at a country house to find out which of them had betrayed their leader in this British film-noir … In a chilling coda, he accuses a powerful politician of being a secret mafia supporter and Italy moves uneasily into the new millennium. A good book anyone interested in spies or the cold war. Pierfrancesco Favino stars as Tommaso Buscetta in Marco Bellocchio's The Traitor.http:... "The Mafia's not invincible. The Traitor review – the real goodfellas: Cosa Nostra on trial. But those wanting a more detailed exploration of organized crime in Italy - and the mental trauma it inflicted on soldiers and civilians alike - would do well to make time for Bellocchio's latest. 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