Flight of the Innocent Reviews

A nightmarish fairy tale masquerading as an arty thriller, FLIGHT OF THE INNOCENT mixes fantasy and action elements with skill, but ultimately rings false. Young Vito (Manuel Calao) is the fanciful child of hard-headed peasants from Aspromonte, the kidnapping center of Italy. His economically dispossessed father and brothers are kidnappers, and their most recent victim is the young son of the wealthy Rienzi family. Vito is the innocent of the title, though his innocence is inevitably compromised: when he sees a single splash of blood on his father's shoe, he knows all too well what has become of the Rienzi boy. Vito's flight begins when a rival band of kidnappers slaughters his family; the sole survivor of the massacre, and the only person who knows the location of the ransom money the Rienzis have paid, Vito strikes out first for Rome, where he has relatives. Luck and native wit keep Vito one step ahead of Scarface (Federico Pacifici), the killer who realizes there's a loose end to be tied up. As for the adults to whom the youngster turns for help--his cousin in Rome, friends of the family, and even the police--they are useless at best, double-crossing at worst. Vito is always thrown back on his own resources. Though clever, Vito is at heart still a child, and dreams of righting his family's wrongs by returning the ransom money to the Rienzis, Marta and Davide (Francesca Neri and Jacques Perrin), who have a country home outside Rome. They, not surprisingly, refuse to believe the news and use the money to pay off Scarface's gang, who now claim to have their son. Vito interrupts the payoff, and only the timely arrival of the police--and the ensuing bloodbath--saves him. FLIGHT OF THE INNOCENT falls between two schools of filmmaking. On the one hand, it's squarely in the tradition of visually ravishing, hallucinogenic Italian art films; the fantasy sequences in which Vito imagines a perfect world of peace and harmony cry out to be called Fellini-esque, and the relentlessly beautiful mise-en-scene fairly screams art. On the other, it borrows freely from American action films, tending towards slow-motion blood baths of balletic proportions, a la Sam Peckinpah. The hybrid result is a bit bloody for art movie buffs and a little too arty for action fans. Gorgeously photographed by Raffaele Mertes and kept to a brisk pace by co-writer (with Gualtiero Rosella) and first-time director Carlo Carlei, FLIGHT OF THE INNOCENT is entertaining but shallow. (Violence, adult situations.)