“To kill or be killed. This is the law. Showing mercy is just a sign of weakness. It's a lesson I wish I could forget.” Santo (Alessandro Gassmann)
In My Name is Vendetta, you can transport the manic spirit of Taken to Milan by way of Sicily, and you have your father, daughter fix mixed with the Sicilian Mafia. Violent action does not get better than this with Santo and young daughter Sofia (Ginevra Francesconi) on the run and running to revenge on a Sicilian Mafia that slaughtered his brother and wife.
It's not as stylized as Kill Bill or John Wick, but it has a familial charm with good camera and lighting work.
While you can see immediately this is not one of my usual art films; it is rather a thriller with the popular American motif of family reconciliation prevalent today in our super hero films and family dramas. Netflix gives you a holiday retreat from goody-goody to exercise your natural instinct at self-preservation with naughty on the side.
It's a smart, bloody business emphasizing the central role now occupied by smart-phone technology. Facial recognition propels the action as bad guys can find good guys by connecting photos from your phone to your current location if you should be foolish enough to snap one when your dad warned you against taking it.
So the tech goes as everybody tracks everybody to lead to a final confrontation between Santo and Mafia boss, Angelo (Remo Girone). Sofia, with better-than-middlin’ action skills, participates to bring home the sweetness between father and daughter and exciting action tropes.
My name is Vendetta (a descriptive title if there ever was one) is simply good old-fashioned revenge thrills set in a Euro-trash world whose menace is better because we watch from the safety of our homes.
Just remember, your phone is ever the willing partner in crime.
Netflix knows.
My Name is Vendetta
Director: Cosimo Gomez (Ugly Nasty People)
Screenplay: Gomez et al.
Cast: Alessandro Gassmann (Transporter 2), Ginerva Francesconi (Regina)
Run Time: 1h 30m
Rating: NR
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and hosts Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take out of WCBE 90.5 FM. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com
