After the controversy prompted by Favino at the Venice Film Festival on the Italian roles given to American actors, we can judge by us whether he was right or wrong, and especially if, as a Roman, he provided us with a satisfactory Venetian dialect. He is the absolute protagonist of Commander, a film by Edoardo De Angelis with a screenplay written by Sandro Veronesi and Edoardo De Angelis, from which the homonymous novel published by Bompiani is drawn.
Presented in Venice, the film is produced by Indigo is Film, O’Groove with Rai Cinema, Tramp LTD, VGroove, Wise Pictures in association with Beside Production, in collaboration with Paramount+, where it arrived from 13 February 2024 in streaming. Wednesday 20 May 2026 the film is on first TV on Rai 1.
Comandante, la trama
The film tells a real story. Salvatore Todaro, a fascist military and commander of the submarines of the Royal Navy during World War II. Despite his back problem, Salvatore decided to embark on an assault mission in 1940. During the difficult and long journey, he and his team meet a Belgian steamer. While on neutral paper, the steamer attacks them, and they sink them.
It poses a dilemma: leave the crew at sea or take them to a neutral beach with the risk of ending the resources? Todaro, as a true seaman, chooses the second option, and despite some rebellion and protest, the two groups manage to live together for 48 hours, avoiding the attack by an English ship.
Comandante, la recensione
In a somewhat tronphy way, this film tries to launch a message at least ambitious, almost to put a trap. According to Commander, in money, we as Italians (and only as Italians), even during fascism we did not let people sink into the sea, and therefore we should not do it even now. If the fascists did not, of which we exaggerate and glorify the attachment to the group and to the homeland without even touching the small problem of totalitarianism and Nazism, why should we do it? Too bad it doesn’t work exactly that way, try to tell our political class.
On the paper a noble invitation, which for ways, choices and attitudes managed not to make anyone happy, or at least this is what is recorded on social media after the preview in the lagoon. Some are indignant for the noble tale of an almost suicidal fascist enterprise, in an aura of pride for our pasts that here is a little out of place, and that crystallizes in a couple of jokes to underline how the Italians were (siano?) better than the Germans and even the Belgians, if it is for this. Others, on the opposite side of the barricade, are disappointed that the values of Patria and Family have been used for the propaganda “buonist” and who has more to put it. So, what is Commander telling us, and how is he doing it? Very little and very bad, respectively, evidently. To throw gas on the fire of confusion and the impossibility to take a decisive position also contributes the initial quotation, which puts the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. And then? The dish is full, its content does not like anyone (or almost). Commander is a mediocre and ruffian film, which misses the mark.
Il cast
Pierfrancesco Favino is Salvatore Todaro, commander of the Navy during World War II. Massimiliano Rossi is Vittorio Marcon, his second in the assault company. The two will force each other in difficult times. Johan Heldenbergh is Georges Vogels, the Belgian captain, in neutral theory, who was carrying British armor. Arturo Muselli is Danilo Stiepovich, one of the boys on board. Giuseppe Brunetti is Gigino Magnifico, the cook. Gianluca Di Gennaro is Vincenzo Stumpo, a diver who loses his life to save the submarine. Johannes Wirix is Jacques Reclercq, a member of the enemy crew who acts as an interpreter.
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