Based on the famous novel , this is an intense and very realistic depiction of the Italian partisans and their guerrilla war against Italian Fascist and German Nazi troops in the Langhe hills ( the countryside of rolling hills quite near to Turin ) during the one crucial year of 1943-44. It is a very dry eyed rendering of guerrilla war and its casualties and the many bloody skirmishes rather than battles of which such a guerrilla war consists . There was a political ideology to many partisans but , overall ,these aspects are handled much more subtly than Ken Loach did in Land and Freedom (which I consider to be an inferior film to this one).
There are a lot of characters and nicknames and following who is who is not always easy but then is such a war not very like that in its desperation and periods of both boredom and frenetic , sudden activity ? The reviewer who said that this is not an " action " film is correct in that it is not a glossy , sanitised Hollywood confection but is wrong in the sense that it is full of the rattle of gun fire and life- and -death action . This is a fine ( albeit more than two hours in duration) little movie.
There are a lot of characters and nicknames and following who is who is not always easy but then is such a war not very like that in its desperation and periods of both boredom and frenetic , sudden activity ? The reviewer who said that this is not an " action " film is correct in that it is not a glossy , sanitised Hollywood confection but is wrong in the sense that it is full of the rattle of gun fire and life- and -death action . This is a fine ( albeit more than two hours in duration) little movie.