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MAFIA INC
Director: Podz (Daniel Grou) Cast: Sergio Castellitto, Marc-André Grondin, Gilbert Sicotte, Mylène Mackay, Donny Falsetti, Vittorio Rossi, Gerry Mendicino, Michael Ricci, Domenic Di Rosa, Luigi Saracino, Antonio Iammatteo MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 2:23 Release Date: 2/19/21 (virtual; digital & on-demand) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 18, 2021 A crime lord wants his business to become legitimate. A son thinks his gangster father is taking him and his accomplishments for granted. A mafia soldier, close to the crime family, is a loose cannon, whose actions threaten to undo decades of work. There's a lot that's familiar about the story and characters of Mafia Inc—and not because it's based on a true story, as documented in André Cédilot and André Noël's non-fiction book of the same name. Director Podz (aka Daniel Grou) and screenwriter Sylvain Guy weave an intriguing and complex tale from these familiar elements, though. The story revolves around Frank Paternò (Sergio Castellitto), known as the "godfather of the Canadian mafia," and his attempt to have the family business become involved in the enterprise of a bridge connecting Sicily with Italy. Back home in Montreal in the 1990s, the Paternò family has to deal with the drug trade, warring local gangs, snitches, and other illegal affairs. For a while, most of this story feels like an extended montage of various negotiations, dealings, and killings. Guy's screenplay has the scope of some complicated mafia epic, in which the plot consists of multiple connections and plans and treachery, but Podz presents it with a sense of the relatively ordinary. When Frank discovers that one of his oldest soldiers has been blabbering about the bridge deal, he arranges to have him tortured and killed at a local butcher shop. The butcher calls the family to say the work has finished and adds, with disturbing matter-of-factness, "Tell the guys to stay away from the sausage for a while." It's just work for these people. In the backdrop, at first, is the story of two families: the Paternòs, namely Frank and his elder son Giaco (Donny Falsetti), and the Gamaches, tailor Henri (Gilbert Sicotte) and outcast son/Paternò foot soldier and adopted son Vince (Marc-André Grondin). That all comes to the fore, though, as Vince's unthinkable actions to get drugs into Canada make him a pariah to both families. The resulting conflict—filled with betrayals and clashing loyalties and, obviously, murder—does distinctly become a family affair of old pains and resentments leading these characters to the places they are now. That gives Mafia Inc some additional heft, and we watch as the ties that bind in this family business can be made to strangle, too. Copyright © 2021 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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