As I have already said and I will continue to say, again and again, who, better than Italians, can speak, about Mafia? Who? As for WW2 in Europe - not the Pacific , who better than the Germans can speak about it? In the most accurate, authentic, realistic way I mean? And who besides Pasquale Squietieri, Damiano Damiani and Francesco Rosi, are able to show how Mafia actually worked, inflitrated the Italian society, contaminated it. No one, except those three, were able to do it. Other Italian flicks belonging to the polizziotesco genre were not mafia movies, because too violent, too superficial, with far too much gratuitous violence, too much bloody and misogynistic lines. Not enough credible for me, because destined to saturday evenings audiences, not intellectual. But directors of such movies, polizziotesco such as Fernando Di Leo or Enzo Castellari, were great directors, very efficient, but only in their own genre, not the pure Mafia one. So this one, I comment now, is a pure masterpiece, it tells a very unusual story about Mafia in Italy history, and the decision that Mussolini made to eradicate the Octopuss once and for all. This is an awesome film, powerful, gritty, with terrific scenes such as this one where a Mafia leader smashes his own skull on his cell wall, to be sure not to talk to the police. Outstanding sequence that summarizes the whote film.
Review of Il prefetto di ferro
