Reviews

What a top notch TV series. Great not just by Italian standards, but by any standard. One of the best, if not the very best crime series I've ever seen, and I consider this better than most crime films. It has nothing to do with the Sopranos, which follows the life of a mafia family, a man at the very top of the food chain and his personal family. This show is about young guys, not a family, only partners in crime, and their rise from the very bottom. It is somewhat similar to Peaky Blinders in that regard.

It is deep and rich. It's not a very fast paced show, but it's fast enough that every episode has actual events and significance. It's not a slow show at all - no mood setting scenes, long dialogues about insignificant things that are just about foreshadowing or symbolism, but it doesn't skip on details of how this gang went up, so no montages to rush through the process just to get us where they are, as an established gang. It's not a story about an established gang, it's the story of the rise of this group of young men in the crime world.

The other recent Italian TV series to get big outside Italy is 1992, but this is much better than 1992. It's better than any Italian series and almost all Italian films. It's seriously that good. It is in my top 20 best TV shows of all time and is rising by the episode.

I'd say the second worst, after "Be Cool." In Her, the future is a terrible place filled with soft people too soft to get out of their own way to do anything. The protagonist is a soft loser, too soft by his own standards. He is a troubled soul, a sort of futuristic emo, tortured by things too soft to be considered First World problems. And the world is just like him - soft, pastel, fuzzy, like some kind of ad for boutique soap bars or pink and mint-green towels. This future is presented as a utopia, but it's a sad, miserable place.

This future is not just the backdrop to the story, as the protagonist is a product of this future. In this future, almost everyone is like him, yet he is worse than them all.

I can't prevent you from seeing the film. There are too many good reviews for this film. Maybe the ones that hated it are the minority.