Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Immortal’ on HBO Max, a Gripping Spinoff of Gangster Saga ‘Gomorrah’

Now on HBO Max, The Immortal (L’immortale) marks the return of Marco D’Amore’s gangster antihero Ciro Di Marzio to the Gomorrah saga, in spite of the character’s apparent death in season three — “apparent” being the key word here. This feature-length film was a solid theatrical hit in Italy in late 2019, following the international success of the series on Sky Atlantic, Sundance TV and now HBO Max (which will debut the fifth and final Gomorrah season later in 2021). D’Amore directs and co-writes The Immortal, which serves as an origin story for Ciro, the charismatic man of few words who was the series’ focus for much of its run.

THE IMMORTAL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: A muffled gunshot: Gennaro (Salvatore Esposito) puts a slug in Ciro’s gut and watches his body sink into the ocean. Cut to a few decades prior: An earthquake rattles a building, and a woman pushes against the flow of people to get to her apartment. She grabs her baby a heartbeat before the floor crumbles beneath her feet. Adult Ciro is pulled from the drink and rushed to the hospital. Baby Ciro is pulled from the rubble. He has defied death twice now, against the odds. What was the title of this movie again?

Adult Ciro was in a coma for a while. Nobody knows he survived. Now he has a look on his face like he’s seen the other side and escaped it but it’s still staring him down. Don Aniello (Nello Mascia) gives him a fresh start in Latvia, where he plans to transform a peanuts counterfeiting ring into a far more lucrative drug-trafficking endeavor. Ciro arrives and meets with Yuri (Aleksey Guskov), the Russian mobster who’ll be buying the goods. On the drive back, Ciro is smash-’n’-snatched by Latvian goons who are at war with the Russians. They want the drugs, or else. Ciro’s caught between a rock and a hard place, but he’s survived worse, hasn’t he?

He meets the fellow Italians who will work under him. Bruno (Salvatore D’Onofrio) greets Ciro, and his eyes widen, possibly because he’s now Don Ciro, but mostly because he knows and remembers Bruno from many years ago. Flashback to the 1980s: Little Ciro (Giuseppe Aiello) is one of many orphans cared for by younger Bruno (Gianni Vastarella), who teaches his young squad how to smash car windows and steal their contents, and pilfer goods from trucks stuck in traffic. Ciro is special to Bruno, though; there’s an earnest father-son bond happening here, and Ciro all but worships Bruno’s girlfriend, Stella (Martina Attanasio), who has the singing voice of an angel.

We jump back and forth, back and forth: Adult Ciro establishes a smooth-running drug-running business, but otherwise, he smokes and he’s sad and he’s sad and he smokes. Young Ciro, Bruno and Stella are like a damn family, laughing and eating and playing together. A prosperous year passes in Latvia; young Ciro shows shrewdness beyond his years, which fits nicely with Bruno’s hopes of being more than just a toadie in the organized-crime biz. Everything in both timelines is going just smashingly — until they aren’t, of course.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Of the many feature-length quasi-standalone spinoffs of TV series, The Immortal feels more vital than the enjoyable-but-unnecessary El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, but not quite as profound with its sense of closure as Deadwood: The Movie.

Performance Worth Watching: There’s a lot going on in D’Amore’s characterization of Ciro. We barely see anything beyond the slightest alteration in his stoic gaze, but when it happens, it’s significant. There’s surely some broiling trauma inside him, and even through the macho-gangster posturing and the strong-silent-type affectations, he always seems vulnerable, his death wish omnipresent.

Memorable Dialogue: This exchange shows us exactly how much Ciro feels he has to lose:

Don Aniello: So it’s true what they say. No one can kill the immortal. The shot they fired into your chest stopped a millimeter from your heart.

Ciro: I need to smoke, got a cigarette?

Sex and Skin: None. Ciro’s too mopey to f—.

Our Take: D’Amore — who co-writes with Maddalena Ravagli and Leonardo Fasoli — nicely balances the parallel stories, intertwining them with some modestly profound thematic focus, ramping up the tension for the climax and lending it all a sense of operatic tragedy. Ciro’s remarkably good at being a crime boss, and the film implies that he might not be without the darkened psychic shroud that surrounds him at all times, hardening him to the life-and-death realities of the business. Yuri mentions to Ciro in passing that men in their position always make their way solo. Ciro watches through the window of his silent and empty room as one of his top officers hugs and banters with his wife and children; tell me, whose life is more precarious, the gangster with healthy, satisfying relationships, or the one without?

The Immortal situates itself nicely within the Gomorrah timeline, but functions nicely as a standalone piece. D’Amore’s characterization of Ciro as a man who’s not much for small talk — or medium talk, or any talk that isn’t practical gangster-business talk, really — holds the narrative together and opens the door for us to have the usual conflicted emotional experience where we want to see this guy succeed despite the fact that he’s amoral at the core. Ciro’s conflicts end in a dramatically satisfying fashion with a sound assertion: Gangsters never forget.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Immortal is an entertaining, well-made and thematically meaningful addition to the Gomorrah story.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Watch The Immortal on HBO Max