Salvo review

After assassinating her brother, inscrutable mafioso Salvo (Saleh Bakri) keeps blind girl Rita (Sara Serraiocco) hostage, unable to kill her for reasons kept, like his white t-shirt, extremely close to his chest.

Although it begins with a striking shootout, writer/directors Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza’s debut explores over-familiar territory and suffers from fiercely ponderous pacing.

With no context to help us care about either character, and Bakri barely raising an eyebrow as he grumps around like a gloomy Terminator, the result is an exercise in muddy, moody subjectivity.