Salvo (2013) – Film Review

Engrossingly written and directed by Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza, this appealing Sicilian film is a well-made, involving, straightforward Italian Mob thriller. Built along the lines of the Mafia movie meets Wait Until Dark, it gets on briskly and capably with the job in hand.

In that 1967 classic thriller, Audrey Hepburn plays a blind woman terrorised by crooks after cocaine hidden in a doll. In this one, a Mafioso’s bodyguard and hit man foils an attack on his boss and hunts down the man who organised it, encountering the man’s blind sister in his house, sparing her life and of course falling for her.

In an excellent performance, Saleh Bakri makes an extremely strong, silent impression as the bodyguard Salvo, and Sara Serraiocco is effective too, though she perhaps too little to say or do as the blind woman Rita.

After its brilliantly thrilling first reel, Salvo works hard to build credibility, believable characters and a brooding atmosphere, and builds to an exciting climax. Throughout it looks great, it’s a tense nail-biter of a movie and has plenty of film noir charms. It takes its commercially minded story seriously and the only overt nods to art are in Daniele Ciprì’s glorious cinematography on location in Sicily. Salvo does beg to be seen on a cinema screen for full impact and enjoyment.

It won the Critics Week Grand Prize at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and you can understand why.

(C) Derek Winnert 2014 derekwinnert.com