Black Turin is a peculiar mixture of boys adventure film and mafia movie, a cross between the kind of stuff that the Children’s Film Foundation used to churn out and a Francesco Rosi film. Directed by Carlo Lizzani, it’s a pretty miserable, glum affair; a movie with a bleak outlook and downbeat ending of the type that you’d never find in a Hollywood production aimed at kids. When Rosario Rao (Bud Spencer) is sent to prison for a murder he didn’t commit, his two sons and an idealistic young lawyer join forces to track down the guilty culprits. Despite a lack of interest from the authorities, they manage to discover that it was all down to a turf war between rival organised crime factions, and Rosario was framed because he was such a morally upstanding kind of guy they all saw him as a potential threat. Proving all of this, though, will be a dangerous task…
A lot of people rate this highly but, although it’s a good film, I wasn’t convinced, especially in comparison with Lizzani’s previous crime films, Wake Up and Die, Bandits of Milan and Barbagia. Partially it’s because of the juvenile leads, who aren’t as obnoxious as is often the case in Italian films, but too much time is still given over to their antics. The characters are very black and white, the social observation is restrained and the script seems somewhat unpolished. It’s still worth watching, but ultimately one of the director’s lesser films.
