Angels of Evil – review

Veteran Italian actor and film-maker Michele Placido – who directed the crime thriller Romanzo Criminale – now gives us a big, brash but weirdly empty gangland drama based on the life and times of Renato Villanzasca: a bank robber, kidnapper, gangster, fugitive from justice and all-round cult figure from Milan, who dominated Italy's headlines in the 1970s. Kim Rossi Stuart, the movie's co-writer, gives a slightly uninteresting performance as Villanzasca himself, without anything like the charisma of Vincent Cassel in Mesrine, or Edgar Ramírez in Carlos. From Renato's predictably tearaway childhood, Placido takes us through Renato's violent, shapeless career in crime, getting his crew together, and climbing up the ladder to attain criminal pre-eminence. None of it's bad: but it leaves unanswered the question of why exactly we should care about this guy. An efficient, if flavourless movie.