Adagio

Rome is currently on fire, both literally and figuratively, and honestly, I felt that in my soul. I watched Stefano Sollima’s Adagio while my neighbor was loudly power-washing their driveway, and the constant, aggressive hum of the water actually blended perfectly with the film’s oppressive, industrial soundscape. It’s a movie that feels like a heatwave—sticky, exhausting, and making you wonder if the world is finally ending. While the rest of the world looks at Rome and sees the Colosseum and overpriced gelato, Sollima sees a decaying concrete labyrinth filled with crooked cops and gangsters who have stayed at the party way too long.

The Roman Burn

This isn't the Rome of Roman Holiday. This is a city plagued by literal wildfires encroaching on the suburbs and rolling blackouts that plunge the characters into sweaty darkness at the worst possible moments. The plot kicks off when a jittery teenager named Manuel (Gianmarco Franchini) gets squeezed by a group of corrupt Carabinieri led by Adriano Giannini. They want him to infiltrate a high-end party and gather dirt on a target, but Manuel panics and flees.

With nowhere to go, he turns to his father’s old associates—men who were once the kings of the Roman underworld but are now just human wreckage. This is the third entry in Sollima's "Roman Crime Trilogy" (following ACAB and the excellent Suburra), and it feels like a weary exhale after a long night of violence. In an era of shiny, sanitized streaming thrillers, Adagio feels refreshingly filthy. It was dumped onto some international streaming platforms with very little fanfare, which is a shame because it’s the kind of mid-budget genre filmmaking we keep saying we want more of.

The Avengers of Italian Noir

The real draw here is the cast. If you’ve followed Italian cinema over the last twenty years, this is basically the genre version of The Expendables, but with actual acting. Pierfrancesco Favino, who played the lead in Sollima’s Suburra and was brilliant in The Traitor, is almost unrecognizable as Cammello. He’s bald, hulking, and looks like a thumb that went to prison and came back with a grudge. Then you have the legendary Toni Servillo (the face of The Great Beauty) playing Manuel’s father, Daytona, who appears to be slipping into dementia—or maybe he's just the only one smart enough to play crazy.

Watching these heavyweights share the screen is a delight. Valerio Mastandrea rounds out the trio as Polniuman, a blind former sniper who lives in a fortress of old tech. There’s a specific kind of contemporary fatigue in their performances that resonates. They aren’t "legacy sequels" heroes coming back for one last ride to save the world; they are broken men trying to save one kid because it’s the only decent thing they have left to do. The makeup work to age these actors up and make them look physically ravaged by life is top-tier—they look like they haven't seen a salad or a peaceful night's sleep since the 1990s.

Action in the Dark

The action in Adagio is, as the title suggests, slow and deliberate. Sollima isn't interested in the hyper-fast "shaky cam" that dominated the early 2000s or the "gun-fu" of the John Wick era. Instead, he focuses on tension and geography. There’s a standout sequence in a crowded train station during a blackout that is a masterclass in spatial awareness. You know exactly where the threats are, how far away the exit is, and just how doomed the characters might be.

The sound design by Max Casacci (from the band Subsonica) is a highlight. It’s heavy on the bass and electronic drones, making the city’s electrical grid feel like a dying beast. The movie treats a power outage like a jump scare, and in our current age of infrastructure anxiety, that hit a little too close to home. It’s a very "now" film—it captures that specific 2020s feeling that everything is slightly broken, the weather is wrong, and the people in charge are the ones you should fear the most.

Interestingly, Sollima shot this during a period when Rome was actually experiencing record-breaking heatwaves and power issues. The sweat on the actors' faces isn't just a spray bottle; they look genuinely miserable. That's the secret sauce of Italian crime cinema—they lean into the grime. Even though it's a modern film with crisp cinematography, it carries the DNA of the 70s poliziotteschi films, where the line between the law and the mob was a smudge of gray.

Adagio doesn't reinvent the wheel, and the middle act drags a bit as Manuel moves from one safe house to another, but it’s a rock-solid thriller for anyone who misses movies that feel like they were filmed on location in a place that actually smells. It’s a story about the sins of the father being visited upon the son, set against a backdrop of a city that's literally melting. If you can find it on your local streaming service, it’s well worth the two hours, especially if you’re tired of superhero CGI and want to see some veteran actors chew the scenery while the lights flicker.

The ending is a bit more sentimental than I expected from the guy who gave us the bleakness of Gomorrah the series, but after 120 minutes of watching Rome burn, I didn't mind a little bit of catharsis. It’s a fitting end to Sollima's trilogy, proving that even in a world of franchise dominance and algorithm-driven content, there’s still room for a dark, moody, and deeply human crime story. Just make sure you have a cold drink nearby—you'll feel parched just watching it.