With the recent Paramount / Republic Pictures release of Cassino in Ischia, starring Australian leading man, Dominic Purcell (Prison Break), the filmmaking tandem of brothers Joseph A. Ciota (writer) and Frank Ciota (director) continues its string of quality feature films, all of which bear their signature warmth and humor while giving us inside peeks at quirkily original slices of modern Italian-American family life on our shores -- The North End (1997), Stiffs (2010) -- as well as Americans trying their hands at making a living and a loving in the old country -- Ciao, America! (2002), Cassino in Ischia (2024).
For our protagonist, Joseph A. Ciota has drawn for us a shallow self-absorbed internationally famous actor, Nic Cassino, star of the wildly popular Spike and Death Trap super hero franchises. However, diminishing roles, along with kudos unforthcoming have triggered for Cassino a belated midlife crisis. Add to that some painful soul searching over a decades-old family grudge, and we can understand why the great Nic Cassino might want to lay low for a while, somewhere no one would recognize him.
Such a place turns out to be the Italian island town of Ischia, part of an ancient volcanic archipelago on the Gulf of Naples. It is here that the Ciota brothers deftly shed sympathetic light on this otherwise prototypical ugly American. In an industry which dispenses rejection like vagrancy fines to the homeless, Cassino's bravado and bluster bely the phobia-ridden superstar's repressed insecurities. Also, a number of sly references, visual and verbal, indirect and otherwise, to the Rocky franchise serve to underscore the underdog aspect of Cassino's character.
Like many successful leaders before them, the Ciotas, who also serve as executive producers on the project, have assembled a very talented cabinet, with a cast and crew comprised almost exclusively of native Italians. With principal photography having been shot on the gorgeous island location and thereabouts, it fell to cinematographer Patrizio Patrizi to help capture the primeval beauty of the place, and that is just what he and director Frank Ciota have done. At once vivid and lush, the outdoor photography is richly saturated with color. Scenes are never visually static. Individual shots within a particular scene flow smoothly into and out of one another, and meld together with the natural beautiful subtlety of the Mediterranean swallowing a setting Sun.
This film is a joy: original in story, assured throughout in tone, paced to perfection, and exceptionally pretty to look at.
Cassino in Ischia
113 mins, Dramatic Comedy, 13+, 2024, 4 Stars
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