Rapiniamo il Duce

Don't take this so seriously and don't expect too much. The actors delivered a very good performance. The substance of the story lacks and some cheesy holes let's questions open.

The spoken language is cool and the music remembers at times the war movies of the sixties. I don't think this movie is based on true events. The way they attacked the head quarter was really too easy to get in.

The costumes and sceneries were well created.

Nice landscapes at the end and who knows if there wil ever be a sequel.

Finally I spent anyway an entertaining time cause I have for the moment really not more options to see on Netflix.

5/10.

As soon as you hear one of the female protagonists singing Paint it Black, you know or should know your leg is being pulled. Gag piles on gag as the story moves from silly to ridiculous. The acting is almost as bad as the dubbing. There have been countless films, maybe not countless, that poke fun at the tropes of war from courage to heroic. I think of Kelly's Heroes for example. Not so much as witty as it is laughable. Need to toss away ninety minutes with little to recall or clog up your grey matter, you have found it here. I didn't recognize any of the actors, and should I see them again, I doubt I would be able to recall any of them.

Sometimes a movie leaves you with some thoughts to think about, the other times it leaves you with nothing, as if you've never watched a movie at all. Rapiniamo il Duce is sadly closer to the latter but not without its buts too.

Ever since I started learning Italian, their movies were mostly misses for me; it's an expressive language and for the most part I just couldn't grab what the characters are saying - and I was just reading the subtitles! - but this one was different. Maybe because it was produced for Netflix but I just didn't feel like it was really made for Italians and that's on the negative side actually. The whole movie seems like an American remake but with an all-Italian cast and that dissonance is palpable starting the first minutes.

On the positive side though Rapiniamo il Duce is a stylish, fast-paced heist drama with fantastic inclusions of animated segments and 1940s appropriate soundtrack but it lacks consistency and the setting (last days of WWII) is only there to bring a feeling of urgency into narrative, not to be a leading vehicle for it. Main characters are no names that we know little to nothing about and therefore are not capable to empathize with anyone - the story plays out so fast it hasn't got time to draw backstories longer than a sentence or a five second clip and that rush is all over the place. The jokes would've been a well-fitting addition and probably the life saver for the movie but they don't exist here as well.

All in all this is a well-crafted movie that looks marvelous on paper, as a comic book adaptation but as a standalone feature it is as lifeless as its main characters.

The main issue of this movie is that it tries way too hard to be cool, and never feels spontaneous.

I mean, what's the point of the female lead singing covers of songs released decades after the events in the movie? Super distracting and doesn't fit at all. Cringe all over.

General lack of self awareness plagues the whole film, and in its search for coolness often takes itself too seriously.

I struggle at figuring out who the intended audience was. Older generations would find it too "modern", the younger ones would only be reminiscing the movies which clearly inspired this one, doing similar things but better. I can only recommend it if you are die hard fans of the genre.

This film tries to be a free run quoting old films like Mario Monicelli's "Soliti ignoti" and other films that were successful comedies of the glorious past of Italian cinema. It also feels free to use music of more recent times, willing to be walk back and forth of time. All this could be good, but at the end it doesn't work. Why? Because the characters are not well designed and the actors are lost in their grotesque representation. An expensive film with a lot of noise and action that does not excite and leads nowhere. You could take just as fun action, but it fails to do so and the narrative gets lost in the attempt to amaze the viewer. I wish Netflix could focus on more meaningful films!