Producers: Beppe Caschetto, Michael Weber, Viola Fügen, Caio Gullane, Fabiano Gullane, Michel Merkt, Gregory Gajos, Arthur Hallereau, Pierre-François Piet, Olivier Père, Rémi Burah, Meinolf Zurhorst, Alexandra Henochsberg and Simone Gattoni   Director: Marco Bellocchio   Screenplay: Marco Bellocchio, Ludovica Rampoldi, Valia Santella and Francesco Piccolo   Cast: Pierfrancesco Favino, Maria Fernandez Cândido, Fabrizio Ferracane, Luigi Lo Cascio, Nicola Cali, Giovanni Calcagno, Fausto Russo Alesi, Bruno Cariello, Alberto Storti, Vincenzo Pirrotta, Goffredo Bruno, Gabriele Cicirello, Paride Cicirello, Elia Schilton, Alessio Praticò, Giuseppe Di Marca and Pier Giorgio Bellocchio    Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Grade:  B+

In the 1960s mob informant Joe Valachi, a member of the Genovese crime family in New York, shattered the traditional code of silence and described the workings of the American Mafia, or Cosa Nostra as he called it, in televised congressional testimony that galvanized the public and spurred further governmental investigation and prosecution.  Two decades later Tommaso Buscetta broke ranks with the Sicilian Mafia and became the star witness for Italian judges determined to dismantle the organization that had long controlled the drug trade and terrorized the citizenry.

Valachi’s story spawned a mediocre movie with Charles Bronson in 1972; Buscetta’s is now dramatized in a much better one, an epic-length docu-drama treatment from veteran writer-director Marco Bellocchio.  Long, leisurely and skipping around chronologically and geographically, “The Traitor” requires a viewer’s patience and attention to appreciate, but for those willing to tune into its wavelength it will be engrossing—although it would help to have some prior knowledge about the events it covers.  (A scorecard of major players would also be helpful; the film provides one, of a sort, via character identifications along the way, but they pass by so quickly that they barely register.)

The film begins by introducing Buscetta (Pierfrancesco Favino) in 1980 at a gathering of the Mafia families on the Sicilian coast—a peace council of sorts.  But he realizes that the organization has changed from its erstwhile “ideals,” with the Corleone faction headed by Totò Riina (Nicola Cali) growing ever more ruthless and murderous.  He decides to leave Sicily, and putting his grown sons Benedetto (Gabriele Cicirello) and Antonio (Paride Cicirello) in the care of his friend Pippo Caló (Fabrizio Ferracane), he departs for Brazil, where he will live with his third wife Cristina (Maria Fernandez Cândido) and their kids while gang warfare rages back home, and many of his relatives—including his sons—are killed or simply disappear.

His life in Rio is abruptly interrupted when he is arrested in 1983 by the Brazilian government for extradition to Italy.  After recovering from a suicide attempt he agrees to be interviewed by straight-arrow Judge Giovanni Falcone (Fausto Russo Alesi), with whom he gradually develops a bond and in whose legal campaign against the Mafia he agrees to become the star witness.  The upshot is a chaotic trial in which scads of Mafia members scream at him from the cages at the back of the courtroom as he testifies and some of them challenge him in one-on-one debates.  (American audiences unfamiliar with Italian judicial processes will probably be surprised at their propensity for raucousness.)  Many convictions result.

The notorious assassination of Falcone in 1992 leads Buscetta, who had been moved into the Witness Protection Program in the United States along with his fellow informer Totuccio Contorno (Luigi Lo Cascio), to return to Italy and testify against Riina himself.  Another courtroom faceoff results.  A sort of coda covers his testimony against Italian politician Giulio Andreotti (Giuseppe Di Marca) and the sharp examination of him by Andreotti’s lawyer (Alberto Storti), before returning to the United States to briefly show his last years.  (Buscetta died in 2000.)

Bellocchio covers this twenty-year period—there is very little background material on the first fifty years of Buscetta’s life—in a relatively sober, straightforward fashion, despite the jumps in time and place. Francesca Calvelli’s editing helps to keep things intelligible despite the vast array of characters, while Andrea Castorina’s production design and Vladan Radovic’s camerawork only rarely call undue attention to themselves.

Favino anchors the film with a compellingly gruff performance of a man who says that he’s acting out of a sense of honor rather than self-interest,–a proposition some viewers might dispute—and Lo Cascio provides excellent contrast as the more extroverted, reckless Contorno; Alesi brings appropriate dignity to the dedicated Falcone.  The rest of the cast ably support them with sharp, vivid turns.

There have, of course, been great fiction films about the Mafia, the “Godfather” movies most notably.  But there’s certainly room for a solid, fact-based work like “The Traitor,” which brings the tale of a significant chapter in recent Mafia history to the screen with skill, and invites debate about the character of the man who propelled it.    

Producers: Bronwyn Cornelius, Julian Cautherley, Peter Wong and Timur Bekbosunov   Director:  Chinonye Chukwu   Screenplay: Chinonye Chukwu   Cast: Alfre Woodard, Aldis Hodge, Richard Schiff, Wendell Pierce, Richard Gunn, Danielle Brooks, Michael O’Neill, Vernee Watson, Dennis Haskins, LaMonica Garrett and Michelle C. Bonilla  Distributor:  NEON

Grade:  B+

The more avid proponents of capital punishment will sometimes emphasize their point of view by saying that they’d be happy to pull the switch (or, given today’s preferred method of execution, inject the needle) themselves, but even they might give pause after watching Chinonye Chukwu’s sober yet scathing portrait of the toll the process of implementing a death sentence takes on those who are part of the system as they deal with convicts on death row, their supporters, and the victims’ survivors (along with the protestors constantly shouting their objections outside).  “Clemency” is an exercise in misery on all sides, and though it’s occasionally heavy-handed in making its points (a hint of Stanley Kramer periodically intrudes), overall it’s a powerful piece of work.

The chief protagonist is Bernadine Williams (a superb Alfre Woodard), the warden of a prison where executions are performed.  She has already presided over a dozen of them, and though she tries, aided by her stoic deputy Morgan (Richard Gunn), to remain businesslike, the traumatic effect on her is palpable, especially when the most recent of them goes terribly wrong, with the inmate (Alex Castillo) going into paroxysms of pain as the sedatives fail to function properly. 

It’s no wonder that Bernadine’s marriage to schoolteacher Jonathan (Wendell Pierce) is under severe strain, or that she feels the need to unwind with Morgan at a bar on the way home, on occasion indulging too much.

To add to her personal turmoil, she is faced with preparing yet another execution, that of Anthony Woods (Aldis Hodges), a black man convicted fifteen years earlier of killing a policeman in a convenience-store holdup.  On the one hand, his lawyer Marty Lumetta (Richard Schiff), himself a veteran death penalty attorney whose frustration about working on such virtually hopeless cases is prompting him to consider retirement, is asking for Bernadine’s help in mounting his appeal to the governor.  On the other, the dead cop’s parents (Dennis Haskins and Vernee Watson-Johnson) are pressuring her to break protocol by awarding them an additional witness chair at the execution.  The sense of her being pulled in opposite directions while maintaining bureaucratic neutrality is etched on Woodard’s face.

Nor does “Clemency” ignore the anguish Woods is going through.  In Hodge’s finely-judged performance, he rouses himself from his mute resignation only when in conference with Marty, though when informed that his appeal has been denied he tries to kill himself, insisting that he wants to decide when he dies.  It’s not until late in the film that he reveals himself more fully when Evette (the excellent Danielle Brooks), an old girlfriend, visits not so much to apologize for her earlier reluctance to stand beside him, but to explain her reasons for not doing so.

That episode is only one of the potent moments the film offers; others include Bernadine’s interactions with Jonathan and Thomas; with a guard (LaMonica Garrett) who, in the end, is unable to go through with his role in Woods’s execution; and with the prison chaplain (Michael O’Neill), who offers words of comfort but is also at point of retirement, unable to continue in this particular clerical role.  The ending of the film will offer no relief to audiences who might be longing for some, lingering on Bernadine’s sad face as she does her sworn duty once more.  The overall mournful tone is accentuated by the work of the craftspeople behind the camera—production designer Margaux Rust, cinematographer Eric Branco, editor Phyllis Hausen and composer Kathryn Bostic.

“Clemency” makes a bracing counterpoint to another recent film, “Just Mercy,” about an idealistic young lawyer saving a wrongly-convicted death-row inmate in segregationist Alabama.  Based on an actual case, that film rejoices in the ultimate vindication of the justice system even in the most difficult of circumstances.  Chukwu, on the other hand, portrays the system as it usually operates, not cynically but realistically.  In “Just Mercy,” it’s clear that the convict played by Jamie Foxx has been railroaded; here it’s not revealed whether Anthony Woods is guilty or not, and what’s at stake is whether—whatever the fact on that score—it’s truly just for the state to take his life as retribution.

It’s a question “Clemency” raises in a very compelling way.