Cruelest Day, The (Ilaria Alpi-Il più crudele dei giorni) (2002)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Drama	None
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	94:21
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Ferdinando Vicentini Orgnani
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Marcello Fois Ferdinando Vicentini Orgnani Vincenzo Albanese Eugen Ban Barbara Begala Luca Biagini Erika Blanc Francesco Carnelutti Dino Censky Robert Dawson Laura Devoti Branko Djuric Abi Gani Duale
Case	?
RPI	?	Music	Paolo Fresu

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.70:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	Unknown	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    This film is the eighth of eleven films in the Italian Film Festival 2004 box set. The films are very different and the only real link between them is that they were all made in Italy in the last couple of years. This one shares the fifth disc of the collection with The Spectator.

    Like Good Morning, Night (also from this box set), this film, The Cruelest Day is based upon a true story from recent Italian history. In 1993/94 a young Italian investigative journalist, Ilaria Alpi, was investigating a story involving western countries dumping toxic waste in third world countries under the cover of aid programs. The trail of money lead her to Yugoslavia during the civil war and also to Somalia during the war and unrest there. Her investigations were uncovering the involvement of senior Italian government figures and during a visit to Somalia she was assassinated, along with her cameraman, Miran Hrovatin, whom she met in Yugoslavia. The film opens with the sounds of the assassination from behind a stone wall and then shows the aftermath, before cutting back in time to earlier in the process of the investigation. The film jumps between Somalia, Yugoslavia and Italy and backwards and forwards in time. This device could possibly be confusing, however it is very well handled here, turning what could be an obvious plotline into a very interesting film, and one of the best included in this set.

    This film was also the only one in the set to feature actors well known outside of Italian cinema including Rade Serbedzija playing Miran Hrovatin (who I remember from Snatch), Amanda Plummer and Tony Lo Bianco. The lead role of Ilaria is played by an Italian actress, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, who certainly does a good job of portraying the determined journalist. This is a well put together film which I found interesting and entertaining.

    An interesting film about a little known (outside of Italy) true story about the perils encountered by investigative journalists.

Video

    The video quality is very good but there are subtitle issues.

    The feature is presented in a 1.72:1 aspect ratio 16x9 enhanced which looks right although I have no information about how this film was shown theatrically. It was recorded digitally.

    The picture was quite sharp and clearly better than most in this set, with no evidence of low level noise. Shadow detail was quite good. There was some very light grain.

    The colour was very good with no issues to report.

    Artefacts were restricted to some edge enhancement such as at 57:00 and a couple of large splodges at 51:03 and 84:12.

    There are burned-in subtitles in English which are mostly clear and easy to read although they were slightly cut off at the bottom of the screen, especially the bottoms of y's and g's. Another annoying problem with these subtitles was that when English was being spoken on screen, Italian subtitles were burned-in in a different font, which I found distracting. When a language other than English or Italian was being spoken both sets of subtitles appeared, but luckily not in the same spot. It all seems a bit slack to me - why can't we just have two subtitle streams, one in English and one in Italian, or at the very least get rid of the Italian ones for a local Region 4 audience?

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio quality is very good.

    This DVD contains an Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 surround soundtrack encoded at 224 Kb/s.

    Dialogue seemed clear and there was no problem with audio sync that my very limited knowledge of Italian allowed me to detect.

    The music by Paulo Fresu is one of the ingredients that really makes this film work. It is very dramatic, featuring rumbling percussion.

    The surround speakers were surprisingly well used, featuring sounds of gunfire and trucks when played with Dolby ProLogic II.

    The subwoofer added bass to the music, which is obviously a function of my amp's bass management rather than the soundtrack directly.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    None.

Menu

    The menu allows only for the selection of which movie to play.

    This film is available on DVD in Italy (Region 2) and includes a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, a behind-the-scenes featurette and at least a trailer as far as I can make out using Google translator. It does not, however, feature English subtitles so the local version is probably the best if you can't speak Italian.

    The video quality is very good but has some subtitle issues.

    The audio quality is very good.

    No extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall