(Diabolik: Who Am I?)
Italy. 2023.
Crew
Directors – Manetti Bros., Screenplay – Michelangelo La Neve & Manetti Bros., Story – Mario Comboli & Manetti Bros., Based on the Comic-Book Diabolik #107 Diabolik Chi Sei? by Angela Giussani & Luciana Giussani, Producers – Pier Giorgio Bellocchio, Paolo Del Brocco, Carlo Macchitella & Manetti Bros, Photography – Angelo Sorrentino, Music – Aldo De Scalzi & Pivio De Scalzi, Visual Effects Supervisor – Simone Silvestri, Visual Effects – Palantir Digital Visual Effects, Special Effects Supervisor – Franco Sabelli, Makeup Effects – Apocalypsis di Sergio Stivaletti (Supervisor – Sergio Stivaletti), Production Design – Noemi Marchica. Production Company – Rai Cinema/Astrorina srl/Bleidwin/Mompragem.
Cast
Giacomo Gianniotti (Diabolik), Miriam Leone (Eva Kant), Valerio Mastandrea (Inspector Ginko), Monica Bellucci (Altea Von Waller, Duchess of Vallenberg), Pier Giorgio Bellocchio (Sergeant Palmer), Chiara Martegiani (Elisa Coen), Massimiliano Rossi (Diego Manden), Mario Sgueglia (Emilio), Francesco Turbanti (Loris), Emanuele Linfanti (Martin), Andrea Arru (Diabolik Age 12), Lorenzo Zurzolo (Diabolik Age 20), Paolo Calabresi (King), Carolina Crescentini (Gabriella Bauer), Barbara Bouchet (Contessa Wiendemar)
Plot
Diabolik and Eva Kant plot an elaborate scheme to steal the valuable gold coins of Contessa Wiendemar from where they are held in a bank vault. However, in the midst of the operation, the bank is robbed by a gang and the coins snatched. Both Diabolik and Inspector Ginko track the gang’s whereabouts by following the wife of one of the men who is killed in the operation to the villa of the lawyer Manden. However, in trying to break in, Diabolik and Ginko are both captured and chained up in the cellar. While they are imprisoned, Diabolik tells Ginko his history as an orphan with no name who was washed up on an island that was a secret base for a criminal organisation where he learned expertise in chemistry, engineering and how to create lifelike disguises. Meanwhile, Ginko’s girlfriend Altea Von Waller puts out an appeal to Eva to help rescue their two loves.
Diabolik is an Italian comic-book that was created by sisters Angela and Luciana Giussani back in 1962 and is still being produced today, having gained a cult following. It features the titular masked thief who, accompanied by his love Eva Kant, comes up with outrageous robbery schemes and always defies the dogged police inspector Ginko. The comic-book was first filmed by Mario Bava as the witty and stylish Danger: Diabolik (1967) starring John Phillip Law as Diabolik and Marisa Mell as Eva Kant. There was also a US co-produced animated tv series Diabolik (2000-1) that ran for 40 episodes.
More recently, the comic-book underwent a revival by the Manetti Bros., Marco and Antonio, as Diabolik (2021), a beautifully stylish period-set adaptation that brought the original to life with perfection. They followed this with a sequel Diabolik: Ginko Attacks (2022) and Diabolik Chi Sei marks a third entry. The Manetti Bros. return to the directors chairs again here, bringing back Miriam Leone as Eva Kant, Valerio Mastandrea as Inspector Ginko and Pier Giorgio Bellocchio (also one of the producers of the series) as Sergeant Palmer, who have appeared in all three films, as well as co-writer Michelangelo La Neve. In addition, there are also return performances from the impossibly handsome Giacomo Gianniotti who took over playing Diabolik and Monica Bellucci who was introduced as Ginko’s love interest in the second film. The film is adapted from Diabolik Chi Sei? (1993), a special edition of the comic that told Diabolik’s origin story.
My problems with the Manetti Bros.’ films is that the first of the series Diabolik sets an incredibly high and stylish standard. However, the subsequent two films, Ginko Attacks and Chi Sei, repeat the basics but only get there in moment, often due to choices made in the plotting department. Perhaps the biggest disappointment here is the opening. Both of the other films have opened with a great caper set-piece but this subverts that in having the planned scheme invaded by bank robbers who take the coins, followed by a shootout and getaway with the police. This is entertaining enough but pales in comparison to the stylish opening capers of the first two films. The best parts of these scenes is the rehearsal of the actual event where we see Diabolik and Eva fleeing in the E-type Jaguar and activating a button that sprouts the main body of the car up on a platform so that the wheelbase can navigate between bollards and across a narrow bridge.
Thereafter though, Diabolik Chi Sei slows right down. It makes some crucial mistakes. One of these is that Diabolik spends almost the entire film chained up in a cellar and not in the midst of action – we only ever see him in his trademark black mask briefly in the opening rehearsal and during the break-in to the villa (scenes that amount perhaps to a minute-and-a-half tops). This is not dissimilar to the second film, which stripped Diabolik of all his gadgets and left him in disguise for much of the show. Here it is nearly an hour before things get interesting again, much of which is spent tailing the wife of one of the gang, the internal bickerings of the gang members and Diabolik and Ginko locked up. You suspect a US version of Diabolik Chi Sei would have trimmed the two hour and four minute runtime down by the better part of half-an-hour or so.
Certainly, the latter half of the film is by far the more interesting one. You can see why the Manetti Bros. chose to adapt this particular story as it is the one that gives us a Diabolik origin story and we see everything from his developing an expertise in poisons, custom-built cars and the creation of his lifelike facial disguises to the choosing of the name Diabolik. And finally we do get a caper as Miriam Leone and Monica Bellucci team up together to rescue their two loves, followed by an epilogue where Diabolik and Eva raid an auction of a diamond, but the film really needed more of this. Such stuff is the essence of Diabolik.
Trailer here