'Black Souls': Moody melodrama about family tradition

Black Souls is a storm.

A moody, dark melodrama about family, tradition, and tribalism set among several Mafia families in southern Italy, it's a cyclical story that swells and mounts in tension, then breaks in a moment of violence - only to return to the same pattern. Save for one thing: The calm after each downpour is more fraught, disturbing, and ominous than the last.

Adapted from Gioacchino Criaco's fact-based novel, the film stars Fabrizio Ferracane, Peppino Mazzotta, and Marco Leonardi as three middle-age brothers - Luciano, Rocco, and Luigi Carbone - who grew up in poverty in Calabria, the region that's home to the organized crime syndicate the 'Ndrangheta.

Rocco (Mazzotta) and Luigi (Leonardi) made it out of their hometown, moving far north to Milan, where they established a successful construction company. The firm, however, is a front for their massive drug-import business.

The eldest brother, Luciano (Ferracane), has stayed home and followed in their dad's line of work as a goatherd. He lives in a pressure-cooker - he has to deal every day with the family that had his father murdered. And though he has been entangled in crime all his life, he desperately tries to keep his son, Leo (Giuseppe Fumo), out of it. It's an uphill battle: Leo, who already has quite an appetite for drugs and violence, has dropped out of school and has no interest in honest work.

What's more, another local crime boss is adamant his daughter should marry Leo.

Leo sets off the action when he is insulted by a thug from a rival family and pays the guy back by shooting up his store. Leo, whose education seems limited to TV and rap music, longs to be a big-city gangsta and refuses the traditional remedy that might resolve the dispute without bloodshed: a public apology.

More violence erupts when Rocco and Luigi are forced to come back home to support Leo.

Intimate, intense, and deeply disturbing despite its lack of on-screen violence, Black Souls is a somber piece of film poetry about men so invested in a rigid notion of honor and revenge they become trapped in an endless loop of violence.

Black Souls also is a testament to fatalism. No matter how much these men dream of having the power to reinvent themselves and the freedom to become masters of their destiny, they are inextricably entangled by the blood-soaked pull of tradition, history, and family.

Directed by Francesco Munzi. With Marco Leonardi, Peppino Mazzotta, Fabrizio Ferracane, Giuseppe Fumo. Distributed by Vitagraph Films.

Running time: 1 hour, 43 mins.

Parent's guide: No MPAA rating (violence, drugs, profanity, smoking).

Playing at: Ritz at the Bourse.

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