Title: Rob The Mob

Director: Raymond De Felitta

Starring: Michael Pitt, Nina Arianda, Andy Garcia, Ray Romano.

‘Rob the Mob’ portrays the Bonnie & Clyde of the 90s, the contemporary Robin Hood couple who stole from the Mafia to give to the poor…with the love-dove-thieves alone being the poor in question.

The American crime drama, is set in New York City in 1991, where small-time crooks Tommy (Michael Pitt) and Rosie (Nina Arianda) – who are madly and passionately in love with one another – specialise in robbing mafia social clubs. As they go deeper down the rabbit hole, they stumble upon a score bigger than they could ever imagine, becoming targets of both the mob and the FBI in the process.

The true story of the couple from borough Queens, Tommy and Rosemarie Uva, is very well depicted on the big screen. The characters are written and interpreted with simplicity, veracity, intensity and truth. Tommy’s interest in the mafia is personal and his thefts, besides being a means of survival, are also his intimate vendetta to humiliate the mob, who extorted and beat his father.

The film reunites director Raymond De Felitta with Andy Garcia, as a heavily bearded wise mob boss. But the true revelation, other than the talented Michael Pitt, is Nina Arianda, with her gloriously vivacious, freewheeling performance.

‘Rob the Mob’ is graced with good humour, seamy period texture and a conscientious moral, that doesn’t overflow in preachiness, by rebuking that what goes around comes around, again and again; hence it is better to do good, rather than sow the wind and reap whirlwind.

Technical: B+

Acting: A

Story: B

Overall: B+

Written by: Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi

Rob The Mob Movie

By Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi

Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi, is a film critic, culture and foreign affairs reporter, screenwriter, film-maker and visual artist. She studied in a British school in Milan, graduated in Political Sciences, got her Masters in screenwriting and film production and studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York and Los Angeles. Chiara’s “Material Puns” use wordplay to weld the title of the painting with the materials placed on canvas, through an ironic reinterpretation of Pop-Art, Dadaism and Ready Made. She exhibited her artwork in Milan, Rome, Venice, London, Oxford, Paris and Manhattan. Chiara works as a reporter for online, print, radio and television and also as a film festival PR/publicist. As a bi-lingual journalist (English and Italian), who is also fluent in French and Spanish, she is a member of the Foreign Press Association in New York, the Women Film Critics Circle in New York, the Italian Association of Journalists in Milan and the Federation of Film Critics of Europe and the Mediterranean. Chiara is also a Professor of Phenomenology of Contemporary Arts at IED University in Milan.

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