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Rating: There are authors who inevitably remain connected to their geographical origins and are particularly keen to let the whole world know the most lurid facets of their native lands; it is no coincidence that the best mafia films were directed by guys named Coppola, Scorsese, and De Palma. It is also no coincidence that some authors want to make the general public understand that this unfortunate subculture is an integral part of the fusion and homogenization process among peoples that gave birth to what has today become the new continent. Everyone has been involved in this cinematic imaginary, in this sense: Italians (primarily), Russians, Poles, and Irish. People who, over time, contributed to scorched earth and sucked the soul and resources of the new world (Scorsese explained how it all started with "Gangs of New York"), bad, ruthless people who kill, betray, and become rich. But it is also the same people who are represented on the big screen as the absolute protagonists, whether we like it or not.
The task of cinema is to choose what to show us. The viewer's eye does not necessarily have to be critical and objective when in a story there are no good and bad, when the main character is called Vito Corleone or Tony Montana, when the very depiction of the facts leads us astray from what is right or wrong.
Phil Joanu is an Irish director and he has chosen to show us how part of his people grew up in the USA through violence and abuse (a bit like Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola did), but he does so from the point of view of a "good" guy, Terry, a cop who infiltrates, in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood, an Irish criminal organization with the task of dismantling it. However, Terry is also Irish and, above all, Hell's Kitchen is his old neighborhood and the people he must betray are his old friends. Terry has a past as a delinquent, but he then went to the other side, the good side of America, the same America that now wants to uproot those cancers that continue to grow on the streets.
"State of Grace" is this, a journey into the protagonist's duality, a journey that, until the end, does not let us understand whether Terry is a mobster or a cop, a lucid and bitter version of the truth... when you grow up in filth, it's impossible to shake it off. Terry is the good America, the one that reaches its state of grace when it can see itself as saving immigrants just by taking away their accent, but it is also the root of evil that wants its personal state of grace by saving only the people he loves. Terry is not Donnie Brasco, he is not infiltrated with an imaginary name, he is thrown back into the sewer where he grew up, the same sewer where he has now found friendship and love and the fact that he is a cop gradually begins to mean nothing.
Without shouting it as a masterpiece, it must be said that "State of Grace" is a beautiful film, tense, engaging enough to throw the viewer into the protagonist's head, living with him the anguish of betrayal and the impossibility of redemption; the narrative is woven in the manner of a Shakespearean drama constructing sequences of strong scenic intensity, the music is perfect and the performances effective enough.
The inevitable finale takes place during the St. Patrick's Day Parade.....dozens of people dressed in green parading with smiles while a few meters away are blood, bullets, and hatred.....what the Irish America would like to be and what, unfortunately, it still is.
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