Wordiezett So much average

SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

paradux Here is a backstory you will not find in a comic book, but likely deserves one anyway.A non-traditional director does a superhero film in Italy (believed to the first ever) and sets it against a backdrop of actual themes and events and social issues well known to those who live there.Unlike Marvel and DC, who are fighting each other to the death in an insane crusade to monetize every last story, treatment, and dust bunny in their respective archives, director Mainetti took what he needed from the superhero mythology and threw the rest out.The mere fact that this movie does not care about a sequel or a franchise or a merchandising spin off gives it instant points in my book.When you look closely at it, and see solid writing, good performances, and even a "tragic romance" as good as anything from a daytime soap, you realize that we have something very special here.Recommended.

rajkovicmarko Set in Rome, this film follows the stories of two men living in the suburbs. Enzo, the hero, reincarnates the classic criminal who has nothing worth to lose. His only satisfaction left, are his habits, which are pretty pathetic. Enzo doesn't care about anything, health, nutrition or social relationships. He doesn't even care much about money, as his profession would suggest. He is not the person that asks too much when he is offered a new job. Enzo seems comfortable with his loneliness. He is nothing you would expect a superhero to be like, even before owning superpowers.On the other side, Zingaro, the villain. He is not the classic megalomaniac and lunatic villain, who aims to own the world. Zingaro works with a few guys, looking for the upper step in the criminal context of Rome. As seen in many gangster movies, Zingaro plays the unofficial leader, who always tries to show his madness and pretends respect, sometimes in a pretty crazy way.The main difference between these two characters are their aspirations. While Enzo looks for a monotonous low-level criminal life to afford his pleasures: eating yogurt and watching porn movies, Zingaro looks for his position in the top gangsters of Rome.What excited me about this movie is the missing superhero-classic transformation of Enzo when he gains superpowers. While you would expect Enzo to become a people-caring superhero, he remains in his dark habitat and steals for him. In fact, the first thing he does when he figures out what he is capable of, is literally stealing an ATM. The only transformation is not caused by his superpowers, but by Alessia, a lunatic girl who lives in her fantastic world and has an enormous passion for the Japanese anime Steel Jeeg. Thanks to her, Enzo discovers the meaning of taking care of another person. He discovers love. Even if he know that Alessia has some mind-related problems, he doesn't feel any pity. When Alessia dies, he doesn't look for any revenge. Instead he tries to follow Alessia's dreams: being a superhero, just like Steel Jeeg. This will lead him to battle Zingaro, who earned the same superpowers Enzo owns. While Zingaro offers him a criminal partnership (something he have already seen in Spiderman - 2002), Enzo changed. He doesn't want to be a bad person anymore and fights Zingaro until the end.

lasttimeisaw An superhero iteration from Italian cinema, THEY CALL ME JEEG is director debut from Gabriele Mainetti. Our reluctant hero is a small-time criminal Enzo (Santamaria), who gains superhuman strength after falling into a barrel of radioactive waste in the Tiber river when chased by police in the snappy opening sequence. The story might be transposed to a new location, Rome's seedy outskirt where criminal act runs rampant, yet the narrative structure is more or less commonplace like its many a predecessor, Enzo must adhere to the same road-to-redemption drill to voluntarily take on his responsibility of helping those who are in extremis, although the first thing occurring to Enzo's mind is to rob an ATM machine once he has realized what he is capable of doing. (Btw, ATM machine will automatically deface the notes with ink once it is opened by force, everyday, you live and learn!)It is interesting to posit Enzo as a misanthropic deadbeat, feeding off from pornography and self- loathing, so he needs a conduit to lead him to wear that mask and cape, and here comes Alessia (Pastorelli, a screen debutante), the mentally impaired girl living downstairs with her father Sergio (Ambrogi), she is possessed with the popular Japanese manga STEEL JEEG and insists that Enzo is the incarnation of its hero Hiroshi Shiba. A dissonance occurs when we realize Enzo and Sergio are acquaintance-in-crimes, yet, the way the film introduces Enzo to Alessia gives us the impression that they just know each other for the first time. When Sergio is dispatched by a drug mule, the story predictably binds Enzo and Alessia together, and piles on woeful back-stories to the damsel- in-distress in order to attain sympathy, both from Enzo and audience,the result is 50/50. The problem is that Alessia, played with verve by Pastorelli nonetheless, vacillates in her personalities at the convenience of the plot, she appears to be obtuse enough to bury herself in her infantile fantasy (all she wants is a princess dress) so as not to question the fount of Enzo's superpower and just play along, in other occasions, lucid enough to invigorate Enzo's sense of justice and affection, not to mention gallantly stabbing her kidnapper at a critical moment. So what is the real deal of her? We would never get a full picture since she has one last mission to perform - a dramatic exit to kick-start our hero's conscience.The chief villain here is Zingaro aka. the Gypsy, a crazed psychopath play by Marinelli, the alumnus from Saverio Costanzo's THE SOLITUDE OF PRIME NUMBERS (2010), with unbridled bravado, to counter Enzo's more muted personality. Taking reference from today's spiked fame from YouTube and reality show, the Gypsy has a maniacal hunger for fame,and blatantly takes a leaf out of the Joker's book, the pomp of wanton volatility and cartoonish grandstanding is duly underlay, only to be undermined in the eleventh hour by the much hyped blast, betrays that the movie's budget runs out quickly. Also, it is hardly not to notice, theoretically, our hero's nemesis could fall upon the shoulders of the equally cold-blooded alpha gangster Nunzia (Truppo), but as often as not, there is still no room for women to break that glass ceiling as far as superhero fares are concerned. At any rate, THEY CALL ME JEEG is to say the least, a competent genre piece, might not be innovative as we wanted it to be, yet, it at least plays up the pipe dream from a worm's eye-view, an ordinary type who is endowed with something extraordinary, still gets a rueful sigh when he finds out the rehabilitation of a chopped pinkie toe is just his wishful thinking.

James De Bello Enzo Ceccoti (Claudio Santamaria) is a small time thief living in the poor suburbs of Rome under the same roof as more dangerous criminals lead by the 'Zingaro' (Luca Marinelli) from which he occasionally accepts dirty, little jobs. On one of these, whilst escaping from the police, he accidentally trips into a tank of radioactive material and ends up gaining super powers. As a threat rises in the city Enzo has to decide where his morals lie."They Call me Jeeg Robot" ("Lo Chiamavano Jeeg Robot" original title) comes in as one of the first major Italian production in the super hero genre. Whilst it can't be faulted for lack of diversity and originality, it doesn't manage to transcend genre clichés in a interesting way and because of an overall faulty execution it can be defined as a fine film on its own, yet nothing, unfortunately, remarkable in the genre.The new ideas that spark from the film are many, not all of them work and some are actually the reason the film isn't amazing, but the writers have to be commended for some tropes they manage to subvert and some beautiful touches they manage to add. Ilenia Pastorelli plays Enzo's slightly off balance neighbor and whilst the performances jumps up and down from highs to lows, the character always has something deeply touching about her. I want to avoid spoilers of any sort here, but to sum it up her dynamic was clearly thought out and executed with a pleasant delicacy that was required and hard to hit.Claudio Santamaria is actually an excellent protagonist and one of few words, which Santamaria pulls off greatly. Of all the characters in the film, his was the only one that never lost audience attachment and always gave a clear vision of his motivations and his development. His arch might not be as original as people think, actually quite the contrary, but he is brought to life with an affection and an attention to detail that makes him a character worth following.From a directorial point of view there are many things that could be said both in positive and negative side. What is interesting is to see a first time feature director bring to life such a particular vision. I don't use particular randomly because there are many tonal flaws and ideas that don't work, but there is a very solid voice in the directing and Mainetti pulls his vision off, making his world live and breathe an unusual diversity and an atmosphere that is dark and twisted in its very own way.Where the film looses steam is in some of the performances, coming admittedly from undeveloped or cartoonish characters, from plot turns that result deeply clichéd and deprive the film of a depth it was hinting, but most of all the tonal shifts are all over the place and make for a disjointed experience where you loose track of where the moral balance lies. From darkly comic interventions, to full on dramatic character explosions, to comedic light moments that don't really belong where they are, these continuous shifts make the film really choppy and undermine its world building which is another element it really lacks. We don't understand where in the world the story takes place fictionally, we don't understand the rules of this land, the social climate is never clear for the audience and since it seems that the film is actually making quite an effort to make you understand it, since it plays an important role in the storytelling, the fact that I didn't grasp it was all the more underwhelming.On an action and technical level the film does have merits for managing to cope with such a small budget and making out of it something that is fully deserving of theatrical release. It shows that this is Mainetti's first feature and many edges have to be rounded off in the action department: the hits are never shown on camera. On the other hand, the director uses the hand-held shot in a particularly pleasing way, making the shots breathe and giving each of them multiple beats which is always nice to see.Whilst this movie will not be remembered in the hall of great super hero films from this era it is good to see different personalities jump into the genre and give their own wild take on it even if not succeeding in a masterful execution.