The Last Ride of the Wolves

The gangster picture has always had some glamour, perhaps because there is something compulsively cinematic about crime. But without a layer of glittery artifice, what might the preparation for a heist look like? Well, it might look like parts of Alberto De Michele’s debut feature, The Last Ride of the Wolves. Showing at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, it should make the festival rounds and find audiences on TV and on streaming platforms exhausted by the many flashy variations of gun, girl, and gang. The closest De Michele’s film comes to glamour is its rather grand title. You won’t find shiny guns, custom-tailored suits, sleek hairdos, or smiling vixens here.

Indeed, for much of the film, which takes place in a quiet town in Italy, we see only two people, an old man and a younger one who initially appears to be his driver, talking. Or rather, we see the old man talking—about his life, about a prospective heist—while the younger man listens. In some scenes, the camera faces away from the driver and his passenger, so that we hear old man Pasquale speaking but only see the road, trees, and buildings ahead of him. When the vehicle swerves, there is a slight sense of disorientation. This lends a dimension of quasi-stream-of-consciousness to Ton Peters’ grainy cinematography. Whatever glamour there may be in a life of crime, it is entirely absent.

Slowly, a story emerges for Pasquale; the younger man is mostly a cipher. Back in the day, Pasquale escaped his own violent father but ended up with a mob boss who was just as violent but more paternal. This relationship led Pasquale to money, most of which he lost because of a gambling addiction. The scale of his loss becomes clear during a drive where he points here and there at different things he used to own, including an item he brought from the Venetian town of Jesolo. There is no real regret in his voice, just acceptance.

But there comes news of a failed robbery attack on a truck ferrying millions of euros. Pasquale seems to know who was behind the robbery. But more importantly, because the news reports the reason behind the failure, Pasquale has figured out how to rob the same truck successfully. He needs a team. He calls up the Wolves, a group he has known for years. He is willing to share: the loot is pension enough for everybody. But he needs an inside man and, as the very non-glamorous process to staging a heist begins, some emotional stuff with his driver who is also his son erupts.

It’s very easy to see how this film would be approached by a Hollywood filmmaker. It has the trappings of a sexy thriller. But in this case, the thriller bit is torn to shreds and the sexy bit is entirely vanquished. De Michele knows how this kind of crime works, enough to figure out the buzz centres. In fact, he plays himself (or a version of himself) in the film and Pasquale (Pasquale De Michele in the credits) is his real-life father.

The plans for the robbery and the rather hand-held, low-budget aesthetic of the visual framing are engaging, but because De Michele is quite open about the real-life origins of his story, there is a layer of complication smeared over the narrative. Is this film a semi-documentary and an excursion into the real preparations for a real robbery? Or has De Michele reconstructed scenes, taking enough liberties for it to become a wholly fictionalised representation? The film’s last few minutes answer some questions but not every question an inquisitive audience without access to the filmmaker or his interviews is likely to ask. (De Michele has said the idea for the film came from his father telling him about planning a heist that didn’t pan out; he then got his father and his co-conspirators to take on their roles for his film.)

Nonetheless, De Michele might be happy to provoke questions from his viewers—he has said he was working on an art film, which is perhaps a lofty way of justifying the sudden shift in focus and style at the end of his story. But he hardly needs such a justification if he decides to go mainstream. On the evidence provided by The Last Ride of the Wolves, the man has the skill to lure an audience much larger than art house fans.