Excellent, a Must See

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

A Sicilian country wedding is the setting of story as it begins. Peppino Impastato, a young boy comes to the celebration with his parents and younger brother. At the banquet that follows one can see an assortment of characters that will be pivotal to the story later on. Being Sicily one can dismiss the idea that organized crime hoods are at the bridal table and somehow Peppino's own father knows much more than he owns up to, in this tale about the of an awakening. The viewer never suspects the change from the bucolic setting of the early scenes to the reality of how the mafia works in that part of Italy.Something changes Peppino's perception of life when he goes to visit a local artist that has holds high communist ideals as a priority. Peppino fights with his father and abandons the family home. His life changes completely until he finds his own voice when he and his friends start a local radio in Cinisi, a small town in the island. Little prepares us for the way Peppino's voice will do to the mafia bigwigs that have a tight control on everything in Cinisi.Marco Tullio Giordana, the director of "La meglio giuventu", his epic masterpiece about Italian life seen through different generations, conceived and co-wrote this film about a passionate youth that dedicates his life to fight the organized crime in his home town. Supposedly, it is based on a real person, but not being a hundred percent certain, we have to go on the assumption that it reflects what really happened in that small town years ago.The only reason for watching this Italian film is Luigi Lo Cascio's take on Peppino. As he proved later with his participation in the director's next movie, this young actor shows he is one of the best of his generation and has a great future in the Italian cinema. Also in the cast, Luigi Maria Burruano, who makes a good job as Peppino's father.Although the theme is about Peppino's turn into leftist politics in his own land, the film is enjoyable because it is never in one's face. Mr. Giordana makes the viewer get his own conclusion by stating the facts as he saw them.

I saw this movie just recently and loved it. I was sort of forced into watching it (I as trying to get my friend to bring out "Alien" instead, but that didn't work), and I found it an amazing experience. The performances are sizzling, especially from the title role of Peppino played by Luigi Lo Cascio. For a mafia film I found there to be an incredibly low amount of violence. If only it hadn't been forgotten, because it is a truly underrated gem. No Godfather, or even Pulp Fiction, but still a heart-warming and powerful film.Unmissable.7/10

I was well surprised to see how with intelligence a film with a plot which could be easily mixed up to the typical "mafia's films serie" has been excellently directed and extremely well acted.Normally I do not make any type of comparison to the "golden years" (sixties-seventies) of the Italian cinema but for me is a must today to say that this film and the director: Giordana does not have anything to envy to Francesco Rosi and his films. The actor Luigi Lo Cascio is just excellent well deep involved in his character.Do not miss the film it worths even in DVD or VHS.Rating: 7/10

A very careful reconstruction of a real episode developing in Sicily from the '50s to the '70s. The film has the pace and the political idealism of "Z" by Costa Gavras. Americans might be interested to see the Mafia depicted in its Italian home-base, and relations between the (poorer, but more "original") Sicilian Mafiosi and their American counterparts / relations. This is a film on the protesting youth of the '70s, as well, with a lot of music like in the THE BIG CHILL. In Italy the film has been much discussed for its Mafia theme, but underneath there is a lot of family psychology.