Fear in the eyes, but the riot helmet's reflection conceals it like a veil of inhumanity. In their hands, a baton; in their hearts, many wounds, but not from a knife. Wounds inflicted by wives, children, mothers. Wounds that make you limp for life, as much or more than those in your legs.
Anger in the eyes, but not so much for those ultras who vent out on Sundays. The anger of men at war but torn apart by something else. Torn by normal, non-violent worries, the frustrations of anyone with a disobedient child, a wife seeking a divorce, a mother forced into the city's slums.
Powerlessness in the eyes, because those riot cops have a heavy hand, but not all of life's difficulties are resolved with a punch, a baton strike. Yet this idea often crosses their minds. They fall into it, for a few moments. But those are fatal moments, because a mistake, a gesture of violence in a civil context means more pain, trials, convictions, money. It's not the stadium war, where the jungle's law prevails. Civil life doesn't forgive, but you're a soldier in the trenches. You lose your sense of proportion.
Yet someone has to be there with the shield. But how much do those baths of Sunday violence affect the man behind the shield? And once the man becomes a "bastard," how much does it affect the soldier's actions over time? And how much does it affect the man's private actions?
I recovered this 2012 film and I'm quite a fan of Sollima, even after my lack of enthusiasm for his Hollywood venture with Soldado. This Acab, even today, after eight years, seems to me one of the most uncomfortable and interesting things to come out of Italian cinema in recent decades. Forget criminal novels, here you write in brutal and sharp prose, a continuous snarl of men turned into beasts. A dizzying snapshot with no good guys or bad guys. In fact, at the same time, all good and all bad, in different ways, for different reasons.
A problematic view, where every possible action opens a crossroad, but never as in these cases is the distinction between good and evil, between right and wrong, so subtle and almost unfathomable. This is what shocks you, the difficulty in understanding what to do, and the moral justifications that follow every action, every damned baton strike.
Perhaps some didn't love the film because they expected a side to root for or against. And indeed, certain emphatic scenes with rock music and riot cops in action (but also the same title so tied to fanatics, albeit obviously ironic) don't do justice to a script instead rich with complementary and contradictory insights, a fierce and truly complex social portrait.
Because Cobra, Mazinga, Negro, and the others are somewhat bastards. But it's not that simple; it's a bit more complicated.
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By Geo@Geo
Behind the shields, during a charge, they are alone with themselves and with the awareness that they can do whatever they want, massacre criminals and innocents.
The direction is good, although often the camera does not become part of the events, it remains outside: it fails to engage you.