Piranhas
I cannot imagine what it must be like to live in a place where crime feels like your only possibility in life when you’re young. Then again, I cannot imagine myself living a life of crime. The young men at the heart of Claudio Giovannesi’s “Piranhas,” which is adapted from the book by Gomorrah author Roberto Saviano (who also co-wrote the script here), puts us in that place with ease, and no judgement. We cannot really judge the characters for their choices, either; in the world Giovannesi and Saviano have built, they don’t really have many other ones, and they do what they can in making them.
The film focuses on the character of Nicola (Francesco Di Napoli), a 15-year-old who lives with his brother and mother, who runs a local laundromat. He sees her harassed by the enforcers for the local crime boss who protects shop owners in the town for her hard-earned money, and he is tired of seeing it happen to his mother. When he begins to run with the gangs in town to see how best to stop this from happening to not only his mother, but other shop owners, he and five of his friends get an introduction into the life from the bottom up, and they make quite an impression. Every rise must have a fall, however, and Nicola will have some hard choices to make, by the end, whether it involves who his allegiances are to, his relationship with Letizia (Viviana Aprea), and- if necessary- leaving his family behind.
It’s difficult not to get sucked in to this story- even if most of the characters do not make a lasting impression, we nonetheless find ourselves engaged in the central story being told in this film. I may not know what Nicola’s existence is like on a personal level, but that anxiety of feeling like you need to make a name for yourself, and figuring out how to do that, while also conforming to the pressures of those around you, are very palpable anxieties at that age. The way Nicola navigates those waters is the most compelling aspect of the film; for the most part, however, “Piranhas” doesn’t really have a lot to offer the viewer.
