Cinzia Th. Torrini
Hotel Colonial

In short,

Cain said to his brother Abel: “Let’s go out to the field!” While they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.
Then the Lord said to Cain: “Where is Abel, your brother?” And he replied: “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” The Lord said: “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground! Now be cursed… etc. etc.”

This story, which is even older than the one about the man who walked on water and went up and down the streets of Galilee performing miracles, is periodically revisited in various ways and nuances in crime news – but of this, with all due respect to the victims and their families, we really don’t care much, or at all – and in Italian and international filmmaking.

“Hotel Colonial” is a pretentious yet not too successful film from 1987 written, with the collaboration of Enzo Monteleone (screenwriter, among others, of “Marrakech Express” and Salvatores’ “Mediterraneo”), and directed by Cinzia Th. Torrini, a director who in later years specialized in directing highly questionable and deplorable monstrous TV series (“Elisa di Rivombrosa”, “Don Gnocchi – L’angelo dei bimbi”…). The film was shot between Mexico, Colombia, and New York with a supposedly excellent cast, including Robert Duvall, John Savage, Massimo Troisi, Rachel Ward, and the voluptuous Anna Galiena. The story, set in Colombia, is roughly about an Italian ex-terrorist, Luca Venieri, who has been living in South America for years after faking his death and changing his appearance. His brother, Marco (John Savage), who hasn't seen him for years, goes to Colombia to retrieve the body, but the corpse presented to him for identification is not his brother's.
Marco thus begins to investigate his brother’s life, discovering, of course, that he is entangled in shady affairs. During his investigation, he ends up in jail and, amidst credible settings of urban decay and unhealthy tropical landscapes, he confronts the harsh and difficult reality of life in Colombia, until the decisive meeting with the cynical and ruthless Carrasco (Robert Duvall), the wealthy owner of the Hotel Colonial which gives the film its name and who, coincidentally, is also involved in the Colombian criminal underworld. The ending is, of course, predictable and was already written at least two thousand years before the film.

It is likely that the intentions of Ms. Cinzia Th. Torrini and Enzo Monteleone were for “Hotel Colonial” to be a sort of plausible “Italian Apocalypse Now”. Obviously, not surprisingly, although there are attempts to find common elements between the two films (the journey and the quest in the “jungle”, characters who appear completely alienated and trapped in an improbable and hallucinatory dimension, a good Robert Duvall but a distant relative of his majesty Marlon Brando), the comparison is completely irreverent and disrespectful. “Hotel Colonial” is an unsuccessful film and, as already highlighted previously, a real missed opportunity if we consider the presence of great actors such as the unconvincing John Savage, who is otherwise a giant actor elsewhere (see Michael Cimino’s “The Deer Hunter”), and even Robert Duvall. Marginal and out of place is also the character played by Massimo Troisi, who in the film is an Italian emigrant in Colombia named Werner, who, as in the best and most ordinary Italian tradition, gets by doing odd jobs.  

It's at least curious and unusual the choice of setting this unlucky Italian film, but with American production, entirely in South America. Usually, this kind of thing is set in Bangkok or Saigon. Shall we at least give Cinzia Th. Torrini credit for being bold and original with this choice?

Assuming it was she who decided to set the film in South America.

Whatever Th. means.