Angela Review

Angela
A Mafia don's wife runs a shoe shop as a front for her husband's drug-dealing business in 1980s Palermo.

by Miles Fielder |
Published on
Release Date:

15 Aug 2003

Running Time:

91 minutes

Certificate:

15

Original Title:

Angela

Roberta Torre's refreshing, alternative take on the Mafioso drama tells the familiar tale of loyalty and betrayal within a crime family, but from a female perspective. Where The Godfather and GoodFellas focused on the machinations of male mob bosses, here the protagonist is the boss' wife.

That said, Angela (Donatella Finocchiaro) is no glamour puss; running a shoe shop as a front for her husband's drug-dealing business in Palermo during the 1980s, she's a far cry from, say, Diane Keaton's Jackie Kennedy lookalike in Coppola's classic; when she's not stuffing shoe-boxes full of smack, Angela's out making deliveries like a good little mule. Expect neither the surface allure nor the violence of Angela's American-born cousins - Torre's film, which is based on the true story of a Sicilian mob-wife, is gritty and low-key.

A respectable addition to the mob-crime genre.
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