Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2023 March 24 • Friday

As almost every previously existing fictional hero and villain keeps getting dragged out of childhood memory for some new adventure and various merchandising opportunities, it was only a matter of time before somebody made a Diabolik movie. And so it happened, in 2021's imaginatively titled Diabolik!

Mario Bava already did this in 1968, with the same title, although it's perhaps better known as Danger: Diabolik. No matter what you call it, it's a tough act to follow and the "reboot" or whatever doesn't come close.

There was enough to work with but most of the new Diabolik movie is just boring or ludicrous and boring.

Many of Diabolik's decisions seem insanely stupid and serve only to deliver a moment that the filmmakers knew audiences wanted to see. For example, Diabolik has to throw a knife and kill someone, so that happens, but the reason it happens is terrible.

The movie does audiences a favor by telegraphing in the very first scene the direction it's going to take. As Diabolik leads police on a car chase at night, he ends up eluding them by cleverly turning onto a street where, somehow, at some previous time, he had installed a remote-controlled ramp.

Diabolik is enough of a genius that whenever he assembled the team of engineers and laborers to rip up a public street and install a remote-controlled ramp for him, he picked the right spot on the right street so that at just the right moment he could press a button and jump his car over a police car.

Good thing the police car wasn't closer to or farther away from that ramp! Or on it!

And all that work to install that ramp, way beyond a reasonable suspension of disbelief, for a one-use trick? How could that possibly have been worth it?

Despite taking place in the 1960s, which actually was a good idea, the movie doesn't do anything stylish or fun with either the visual style or music. Anyone who remembers the Bava film with its Ennio Morricone score is likely to feel pretty sad watching this.

I already forget what the plot was. We waste a lot of time on Diabolik's secret identity and that secret identity's wife. Diabolik actually gets arrested and there's a heist at the end that's almost cool but isn't.

Most infuriating is that Diabolik kills people indiscriminately but when he has his police detective nemesis dead to rights he decides to let him go. This is idiotic, but presumably this police character is a major player in the original fumetti.

So what's good about it? Mostly Miriam Leone as Eva Kant. She's perfectly cast and practically carries the movie, which has another good idea in concentrating on her character, making it more of an Eva origin story than a Diabolik outing.

There's already a sequel, again with Leone but with a different actor as Diabolik.