Director Claudio Giovannesi cleverly takes a fairly predictable story (with an instantly foreseeable trajectory) from a well-known genre (crime thrillers, chronicling working class / financially unstable people's economic desperation & tragic recruitment in to exploitative criminal gangs - under the pretence of working to gain a better life, respect within their local communities & security - resulting in subsequent struggles, merely attempting - & often failing - to exist within the dark underbelly of the lawless reality in which they operate) & finds a new, interesting way to subvert the usual tropes by following events through the eyes of children who've thoughtlessly become participants in other people's petty territorial disputes (in truth, naive minors - desensitised to the wrongs they've witnessed around them during their infancy, oblivious to reality - in a cautionary coming-of-age tale, going through puberty & navigating their way through an adult's world where they're totally out of their depth & lacking the self awareness to understand the unavoidable ramifications of their actions) - weaponising our expectations against us by portraying these familiar events (we've seen countless times before) that feel far more grim & foreboding... Because the violence unfolding is predominantly involving teenagers, encouraged (by those who should know better) to tribally war against each other (out of some misplaced sense of performative masculinity, desire to impress friends & remain "cool" - trivial, juvenile pursuits - indicative of their lack of maturity & perspective), spilling blood down the streets of Naples & continuing the cycle of aggression (pawns in a game being played at a much higher level they're able to comprehend), consequently wasting their youth for the sake of someone else's betterment.
Hence, "Pirahnas" is a really uncomfortable & yet profoundly fascinating watch (seamlessly conveying the ease in which one can be carelessly swept up in to the cracks in a system that's failed them - failures which are capitalised on by predators with malicious intent), unoriginal in content & yet still extremely effective in capturing the depressing, preventable corruption of innocence. Therefore, worthwhile to see, in spite of the macabre subject matter.
Hence, "Pirahnas" is a really uncomfortable & yet profoundly fascinating watch (seamlessly conveying the ease in which one can be carelessly swept up in to the cracks in a system that's failed them - failures which are capitalised on by predators with malicious intent), unoriginal in content & yet still extremely effective in capturing the depressing, preventable corruption of innocence. Therefore, worthwhile to see, in spite of the macabre subject matter.