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This Mafia drama sets out to strip away any hint of glamour.

Though the content of the typical mob movie can shock with its brutality and perversity, the tragic arc ultimately reinforces traditional values while allowing a vicarious indulgence in the taboo.

Writer-director Franceso Munzi has particularized the familial relationships enough for it to stand on its own. (As Tolstoy wrote, all happy crime families are the same but each unhappy crime family is unhappy in its own way.)

Black Souls is above all the story of a family divided, a fraternal knot that can be untied only through tragedy.

Solemn, strong Italian film about family, crime and the deep roots of revenge offers widescreen visions and intimate murders, making for a very different Mafia saga.

Broodingly effective as a crime drama because it's driven by family dynamics as much as the mechanics of transgression.

Souls still feels very inside-baseball, trusting the audience to follow along.

It reminds us both the word and the concept of "vendetta" came from Italy.

Quietly commanding, this is the best Italian crime film since Gomorrah.

In a certain kind of Italian mob picture, you expect blood feuds, family feasts, and generational conflict. Certainly Francesco Munzi's adaptation of a popular crime novel has all that, but it's more family drama than shoot-'em-up.

This is a dynastic tale that gets more claustrophobic as it develops, as its web of vendetta-style recriminations closes in on the Carbone clan, goat farmers who have diversified into riskier and more profitable businesses.

The plot may seem familiar from dozens of other Mafia movies but what is original here is the film's mournful tone and its absolute refusal to glamorize violence in any way.