The title character of “Comandante,” Salvatore Todaro (Pierfrancesco Favino), is a submarine commander in the Italian Royal Navy who has a different spirit from the military machos we tend to encounter in movies. He’s certainly tough enough — a bruiser with a dark edge. “Comandante” is set during the early days of World War II (September and October 1940), and as Salvatore leads the crew of the Cappellini, an iron hulk of an underwater vessel equipped with a dozen torpedoes and a pair of machine guns, he’s not shy about his dedication to blowing up his enemies.
But he’s also a saddened romantic warrior with the heart of a poet. As the men prepare to board the sub, Salvatore assembles them for a pep talk, and his look is striking: the double-breasted brown leather coat, the coiffed hair and thick goatee, the gleam of burning-eyed fatalism. Favino resembles a...
But he’s also a saddened romantic warrior with the heart of a poet. As the men prepare to board the sub, Salvatore assembles them for a pep talk, and his look is striking: the double-breasted brown leather coat, the coiffed hair and thick goatee, the gleam of burning-eyed fatalism. Favino resembles a...
- 8/30/2023
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
A 73m x 7m submarine was always going to be a left-field substitute for A-lister Zendaya after Luca Guadagnino’s hotly anticipated tennis movie Challengers was pulled from the Venice Film Festival’s prestigious opening-night slot. And although the gargantuan Cappellini is a formidable presence in Edoardo De Angelis’s 1940-set war drama, Comandante seems woefully out of its depth as a curtain-raiser to a festival still reckoning with the effects of the SAG-AFTRA strike.
Held together by a very strong performance by Pierfrancesco Favino as sub commander Salvatore Todaro, De Angelis’ film takes a long time to set sail, beginning with a strange prologue in which we see Todaro plunging into the sea. This is his first brush with death, and it leaves him severely disabled, being forced to wear a back brace and prescribed serious doses of morphine. “I like you disabled,” says his wife, Rina...
Held together by a very strong performance by Pierfrancesco Favino as sub commander Salvatore Todaro, De Angelis’ film takes a long time to set sail, beginning with a strange prologue in which we see Todaro plunging into the sea. This is his first brush with death, and it leaves him severely disabled, being forced to wear a back brace and prescribed serious doses of morphine. “I like you disabled,” says his wife, Rina...
- 8/30/2023
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
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