Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Robbing Mussolini’ on Netflix, an Italian Heist Movie That Gets WWII’ed

Robbing Mussolini (now on Netflix) posits a sort-of-new “what if” of a movie premise: What if your slick heist flick got WWII’ed? Writer/director Renato De Maria’s film opens with a title card that reads “This story is true-ish,” and the “ish” is the most credible part of that statement, considering the movie is about a group of Italian misfits’ attempt to steal Mussolini’s fabled treasure stash – and note the word “fabled,” because said treasure stash was never found. This is just the movie saying, hey, don’t take what you’re about to see too seriously. So we didn’t.

ROBBING MUSSOLINI: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: MILAN, 1945. The war is almost over, and Il Duce is il-duking in his shorts right about now. There’s yer context. Now, yer protagonist: Pietro Lamberti (Pietro Castellitto), the man better known as Isola, a name suggesting an idea contrary to that of no man being an island. His part in the conflict is to steal weapons and sell them to the resistance, which makes one ponder the probability of shades of gray in the war-profiteering industry. “I’m a thief, not a spy,” he says. “Spies don’t make enough money.” Just as he makes his latest deal he winds up smack in the middle of a firefight and, tragedy of tragedies, his bag of cash gets shot up and destroyed bills flutter all around him. So it goes.

Turns out Isola isn’t an island – not at all. He’s got grizzled vet Marcello (Tommaso Ragno) and a kid named Amedeo (Luigi Fedele) helping him out, and he’s dating a cabaret singer, Yvonne (Matilde De Angelis), who we see on stage crooning “Paint it Black.” I mean, I know Mick and Kieth are old, but come on (pause for rimshot)! Yvonne is also the mistress of Borsalino (Filippo Timi), Mussolini’s secretary of bungling or whatever, a situation that’s much to the chagrin of Borsalino’s wife, movie star Nora Cavalieri (Isabella Ferrari). Just as the Greater Situation is reaching a boiling point, Isola learns the location of Mussolini’s stash of stolen gold and jewelry and such, and decides now is the time to steal the living shit out of that shit.

You know what this means – right, Isola has to assemble a Crew of Misfits with Specific Talents. Thankfully, he’s already got someone on the inside (Yvonne), a skilled sniper (Marcello) and a kid who does whatever he says (Amedeo) in his corner, so the assembly montage is quick. He gathers drug-snorting former racecar champ Fabbri (Marcello Macchia), explosives expert Molotov (Alberto Astorri) and parkour-pickpocket Hessa (Coco Rebecca Edoghame) to help. It won’t be easy though, because not only does Isola need to formulate a complicated action-comedy sequence to rescue Molotov from the gallows, but the treasure is in a storehouse heavily fortified with armed fascist goons. But surely Isola and Co. can come up with a convoluted scheme with many moving parts ripe for complication to grab the gold, right? Yarp.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Consider Robbing Mussolini a sort of anti-Monuments Men, or Ocean’s 11 crossed with Inglourious Basterds crossed with Jojo Rabbit crossed with Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.

Performance Worth Watching: Despite all the “colorful” supporting characters, only Isabella Ferrari’s glamor-vamping as the film starlet is the only memorable performance here.

Memorable Dialogue: Isola: “Someone told me nobody can outsmart history. F— history.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: I won’t say nein nein nein nein nein nein – Robbing Mussolini is just fine. It’s a quick 94 minutes of mostly disposable escapism that tosses anachronism around like Tarantino and deploys flippant comedy like Waititi, and is perfectly consumable even if it doesn’t stick to your ribs. I smirked a few times and poked some holes in the plot and watched with minimum investment and was no worse for wear afterward.

Although the film is shallow and inconsequential, De Maria makes sure his marriage of two cliched subgenres, the war-resistance drama and the heist comedy, is functional tonally and visually. He directs action reasonably well, staging and executing the complex climactic sequence with clarity, and here it’s worth noting that “clarity” does not imply “vision.” There’s an overall lack of purpose to this story – no overbaked notions of “FAMILY” like Fast and Furious or the how-many-twists-and-double-crosses-can-we-pile-up ethic of the Soderbergh Ocean’s films – and De Maria doesn’t do much more than get from point A to point B with a modicum of flair. The Isola-Yvonne love story? Whatever. The resistance? Whatever. The affection we have for the crew, or they have for each other? Whatever. The result of WWII? Extra whatever. Not many films can render one of history’s greatest multinational conflicts as wallpaper for low-stakes shenanigans, so Robbing Mussolini stands out in that regard at least.

Our Call: STREAM IT, but know that my recommendation comes with a non-emphatic shrug. No nein, more of a yeah-sure-why-not (but only if you’re bored), because that’s kind of the whole philosophy behind Robbing Mussolini.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.