A.C.A.B. - All Cops Are Bastards

Most movies about the police want to sell you a side. They either want you to polish a badge in reverence or burn the whole precinct down in effigy. But when I sat down to watch Stefano Sollima’s A.C.A.B. - All Cops Are Bastards, I didn't find a moral compass; I found a pressure cooker. This is a film that exists in the sweaty, claustrophobic space between a riot shield and a flying brick, and it’s a miracle it didn't leave a bruise on my psyche.

I actually watched this on a laptop with a slightly wonky left speaker while eating some overly salted popcorn, and every time a baton hit a helmet, the distortion made it sound like the world was actually ending. In a way, for these characters, it is.

The Brotherhood of the Shield

Released in 2012, A.C.A.B. arrived at a very specific moment in European cinema. The "gritty realism" wave of the 2000s—think City of God or Elite Squad—had finally curdled into something darker and more nihilistic. Directed by Stefano Sollima, who would later go on to helm the Gomorra series and Sicario: Day of the Soldado, this film is an unapologetic look at the Celere, Italy's elite riot police.

We follow three veterans: Cobra (Pierfrancesco Favino), Negro (Filippo Nigro), and Mazinga (Marco Giallini). They aren't "good" men in any traditional sense. They are middle-aged, angry, and drowning in a sea of changing social tides they don't understand. When they take a young recruit, Adriano (Domenico Diele), under their wing, it isn't to teach him about the law; it’s to teach him about the "brotherhood." This movie is essentially '300' if King Leonidas wore blue polyester and spent his weekends clearing out squats.

Pierfrancesco Favino is the standout here. If you’ve seen him in The Traitor or Rush, you know he has this incredible ability to look like he’s about to explode even when he’s standing perfectly still. As Cobra, he’s the ideological heart of the unit, a man who has replaced his personality with a set of tactical maneuvers.

The Sollima Touch: Grime and Grittiness

What makes the action in A.C.A.B. so distinct from the Hollywood blockbusters of the era—like the polished, digital chaos of The Avengers, which came out the same year—is its suffocating physicality. Sollima doesn't use CGI to create his riots. He uses hundreds of extras, real smoke, and a camera that feels like it’s being shoved into the mud.

The choreography isn't about flashy martial arts; it’s about the "turtle" formation, the rhythmic thud of batons against plastic, and the terrifying momentum of a crowd that has lost its mind. The cinematography by Paolo Carnera (who also shot Suburra) leans heavily into the digital aesthetics of the early 2010s—high contrast, deep shadows, and a blue-grey palette that makes Rome look less like the Eternal City and more like a decaying bunker.

I’ve always felt that the best action films understand the weight of a punch, and A.C.A.B. understands the weight of an entire social class crashing into a wall of shields. There’s a sequence involving a raid on a housing project that is so intensely staged it made me want to check my own pulse. It’s not "fun" action, but it is undeniably effective filmmaking.

A Snapshot of a Fractured Italy

Why did this film vanish into relative obscurity? In the U.S., it was barely a blip on the radar, likely because it’s so deeply rooted in the specific anxieties of post-2008 Italy. It touches on the G8 summit in Genoa, the death of a football fan, and the rising tide of immigration—topics that felt perhaps too "local" for international audiences at the time.

However, looking back now, the film feels strangely prescient. It captures that post-9/11 shift where the line between police work and military occupation began to blur globally. The score by Mokadelic (the post-rock band that would later define the sound of Gomorra) adds this layer of droning, ambient dread that elevates the film from a standard police procedural to something approaching a modern tragedy.

It’s a difficult watch because it refuses to give you a hero. Even Adriano, our supposed audience surrogate, is quickly seduced by the violent simplicity of the unit. It is a recruitment video for a job that guarantees you will lose your soul by the second act. But that’s exactly why it deserves a look. In an era where we are inundated with "super-cops" and "anti-heroes" who are still ultimately lovable, A.C.A.B. offers a cold, hard stare at the guys we usually see only in the background of a news report.

A.C.A.B. isn't a "fun" night at the movies, but it is a gripping, superbly acted piece of genre filmmaking that hits like a ton of bricks. Stefano Sollima proved here that he is the king of the "urban western," where the cowboys are exhausted cops and the outlaws are everyone else. If you can handle the bleakness and the subtitles, it’s a hidden gem of 2010s international cinema that still feels incredibly relevant. Just maybe lay off the extra salt on your popcorn before you dive in.