Alex l'ariete
Transferred to a small town in the Apennines after a raid that ended with the death of a close friend and colleague of his, Alex is charged with escorting a girl, Antavleva Bottazzi,[5] known as Leva, and bringing her to testify before a judge.
The film was initially born as a detective fiction in two ninety-minute episodes, called Turbo, which was supposed to air on Mediaset networks and whose protagonist had already been designated as Alberto Tomba, who had retired from competitions and was trying to launch his career as a television personality.
Director Damiano Damiani said in an interview with La Stampa that Vittorio Cecchi Gori offered him the direction of the film and that he gladly accepted, putting aside other projects.
[12] Alex l'ariete performed disastrously at the box office: during the first weekend, only 285 spectators – one third of which in Bologna, hometown of Alberto Tomba – bought the ticket to see the film at the cinema,[1] for a total income of Lire 3.693.000 (about 2300 US Dollars).
In the theaters owned by the Cecchi Gori Group, in Rome, Alex l'Ariete remained in programming until the following Sunday, for a total screening period of only ten days.
He admitted that "my inexperience counted", but that according to him the real problem was that "I trusted those who offered the job, but the editing was not done as it should, three hours of film had to be worked and transformed into a one-hour fiction and not just left as they were.
[9] Luca Bottura, in L'Unità, defined it "the film that made the Lumière brothers regret having invented cinema", concluding that "as a comic bomb it really does not fear rivals".
[20][21][22] Stefania Iannuzzi on MYmovies.it awarded the film two stars out of five, stating that "it offers numerous moments of involuntary comedy" and harshly criticizing the performances of Tomba ("His interpretation is ridiculous") and Hunziker ("Graceful, for sure, but absolutely unfit for the role"),[23] while Enrico Magrelli on FilmTv.it comments that Damiani's direction is "distracted" and judges the screenplay to be "less likely than some old children's comics", concluding that the whole movie is "ugly, bungled, written by real illiterates, and played by poorly organized unemployed".
