Review of Gorbaciof (2010) by Mike M — 10 Mar 2011

As Servillo-Gorbaciof flickers his eyes while counting the cash he's riffling, as he catches himself falling asleep in church, as he builds an almost entirely wordless relationship with the hostess in his gambling den of choice, it dawns on you there isn't an actor at work today more comprehensively in control of their physical resources - or, indeed, better suited to embodying the apparently fathomless corruption of an entire nation.

(One of "Gorbaciof"'s running visual motifs is used Euro notes being palmed into pockets: bunga bunga, indeed.) Whether the rest of Incerti's film is quite up to its leading man's standards remains open to question.

The racket this functionary gets himself into is somewhat sketchy, as though the character came first, and everything else was filled in around him. And the subplot strays into sentimental chinoiserie, more "Memoirs of a Geisha" than "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie".

Despite Yang's appealing playing, the hostess remains a blank, a pretty signifier of purity to be offset against the prevailing corruption; the mid-film shopping expedition Gorbaciof takes her on aims for charming, and instead teeters on the very brink of creepy.

.. On this evidence, we should make Incerti down as a talent of uncertain promise, but you should see "Gorbaciof" for Servillo alone, who manages to achieve - on a smaller, 81-minute scale - something of what Daniel Day-Lewis achieved with "There Will Be Blood": going broad without becoming cartoonish, straining for larger-than-life effects without appearing out-of-place in the reality the film constructs for itself.

This really is where screen acting is at right now.