Piranhas (2019)

I have a lot of friends from Naples and they said this movie depicts the reality of the situation of the youth in Naples today. You follow the story of one boy with his friends who tries to make ends meet while they dont go to school and easily succumb to the ways of the Mafia for easy money. It's really sad. The movie is well made and well paced, you keep asking yourself what are they going do to next and how is this going to end. The love story dragged on a little bit but otherwise its a good watch that I would recommend.

Fmovies: Unfortunately the stories depicted on this movie are true or based on facts that really and daily happen in Naples.

It's another world if you compare with the rest of Italy. It's the devil place.

The movie is well done and the actors are good. But it's pity to see these things.

Watch it and then judge with your eyes.

One thing first: I did not read the underlying book by Roberto Saviano. In that sense, at best, I did not bring a lofty expectation of a proper implementation of a literary material, but could dedicate myself openly to the screening of the film. However, this endeavor became more difficult as a result of the film being awarded the Silver Bear for best screenplay at this year's Berlin International Film Festival. Such an award, which honored the shared work of the books author and the director, raises the bar quite high for the viewer. Additionally, the plots 'Mafia' topic couldn't be called to be among my preferred areas of interest. Concerning the genre this full-length motion picture for sure can be counted to the crime films, but is due to its content course also to be regarded as a drama. The storyline follows the experiences of a group of young people in the Naples of the present time and is located in an inner city setting between latent poverty, educational backwardness, archaic local power structures, violent conflict resolutions, ambition, high risk-taking and naive carelessness. The film does not approach this social subdivision gently and piece by piece, but establishes a narrative perspective that seems to originate from it and at the same time allows it to unfold in the eyes of the audience. This dramaturgical gimmick guarantees a high action dynamic from the beginning on, which is also captured by a frequent use of a shaky hand camera. During 110 entertaining minutes, authentic realities of life are touched upon, their points of contact representing the knots in the network of the storyline. The viewer is repeatedly put into pictures whose brute emotionality leaves at best astonishment, but rather bewilderment. However, this really powerful dramaturgy is at the same time the disadvantageous flip side of this coin: trying to bring such a complex social structure with different characters in just over one and a half hours on the canvas, the film is overstrained and woody in places. The predominantly young actors play lifelike and fresh, however, I came to the supposition that the German dubbing of the southern Italian language reflects the original habitus only inadequately and thus the parzivalous briskness of the young Machos supposedly might not convincingly be intoned. Open and obvious questions remain unanswered sometimes, while on the other hand unexpected insights into the mental state of individual protagonists arouse sympathy and understanding. The predominantly established closeups support this personal closeness and dares only to a full shot or a half-total, if the larger spatial context are able to reflect the individual inner conflicts and forsakeness. The escape, pursuit and fun tours captured in rapid motorcycle rides through the labyrinthine road network of the chaotic metropolis, alternately in a pursuing or preceding axis of vision, can also be seen as a metaphor for the wild, inner search for orientation, belonging and meaning. Unfortunately the soundtrack loses almost completely in front of the background of all these rapidly flooding images, despie the fact that the individual music pieces basically support the situations in principle well. All in all, a worth watching movie, with perceptible weaknesses, but entertaining as a cutting-edge social study. It's like a flickering spotlight on a strange and yet so close world.

Piranhas fmovies. Even though the acting was really good, the movie did not establish any emotional ties towards the characters on screen. Instead of concentrating on the evolvement of the characters, the film focuses more on the plot. Considering that I found the storyline rather predictable and pressed into a typical screenwriting-scheme, it did not catch me nor it surprised me.

The movie was shot quite close. Most of the time you see a range of close shots and close-ups which I found quite restricting in the beginning but I got used to it after a while and by the end of the movie I appreciated the artistic aspect of this choice of filming.

For me personally this movie does not dig deep enough beyond the surface to be more than average and to leave a lasting memory in my mind. But it definitely has some good moments, so if you get the chance to watch it, do so.

The film evidently won the screenplay award at Berlin because it is very true to ground reality of Naples. The title is appropriate. Teenagers who cannot see a future, become small time Godfathers, collecting protection money and selling drugs, working in large groups to get a menacing visibility. My problem with the film: where are the cops? You see them just once during a wedding dinner sequence.

The film apparently uses non-actors. The lead role of Nicola played by Francesco di Napoli is notable, as is the role of his screen mother toiling away to make ends meet. Nicola's dad is never shown or discussed. Francesco could go places as an actor under the right director.

Average film--nothing great

I don't think that books are automatically better than their movie adaptations, but this is clearly the case: not only a lot of changes were made but the general meaning of the story was subverted, delivering a faded, less thought-provoking message.

Saviano penned both the screenplay and the novel, but he and the other writers choose to omit the violent scenes, include several scenes that did not occur in the novel, and change the personality of the main character.

In the movie, Nicholas is a teenager who essentially dreams about making mafia "great again", and is portrayed as having a sense of justice and being essentially a good boy who did terrible decisions. The violence is limited to a few gunshots, and the meaning of the ending focuses on the impossibility of change.

In the novel, Nicolas is immediately portrayed as a power-thirsty teenager who was inspired by Machiavelli and that has no ethics whatsoever (e.g., mild spoilers, to give an idea: to punish a gang member for having stolen a gun without permission, he almost forces his sister to be gang raped; the movie version of the character would have never done this). The violence is brutal and striking, and the story aims at describing the inner evil that teenagers that are involved with the System experience because of the environment they live in.

I personally felt much more invested while reading the novel than while watching the movie. Except for one specific scene that was the only identical one to the novel, most of the sequences felt dry or non-authentic. For who knows the novel, I think it is impossible to appreciate the film. Technically wise, it felt very similar to Garrone's Gomorra, probably it aimed at replicating the feel of that movie, but while the distanced photography and dryness of sequences in Gomorra gave a "tranche de vie" feel, it is not the case for La Paranza dei Bambini. It is sad that this film was chosen to be ran at Berlinale, when Italy has just released Il Primo Re, a masterful and very creative work of art that risks not receiving well-deserved international recognition.