Alessio Della Valle (director)
(studio)
15 (certificate)
123 (length)
07 February 2022 (released)
08 February 2022
Notwithstanding a few issues an American Night, is an impressive feature film debut from writer and director Alessio Della Valle. He’s assembled an impressive cast for this gangster and art world semi-epic.
Courier Shakey (Fortunato Cerlino) is given a painting to deliver with the warning that it his last chance. From Asia to New York, he makes his way to the Dead Rockstars club where the exchange has been scheduled. At the same time a virtually past-it stuntman Vinny (Jeremy Piven) arrives for his own meeting with his brother John (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), while others relevant to the overall plot turn up too.
Though this isn’t immediately obvious as Della Valle has employed a non-linear narrative that slots in plot continuity, backstory, characters and context a la Tarantino, so we return to the club several times.
So the viewer is presented with several entwining and to some extent competing plot strands and individual stories, with a large cast that gravitate towards gangster boss Mike (Emile Hirsch) who has taken over his father’s empire who is trying to run that, get his career as an artist off the ground, and get a valuable painting back.
Set mostly at night the neo-noir look has a neon colour palate threaded through and it looks splendid. There are some very impressive set pieces and Della Valle has a good eye compositional shots making full use of the screen space and ratio. Where it tends to fall down is with its convoluted plot that just about holds the attention mainly through his control of the visuals.
Because the big problem is an overripe script. There are some great rhetorical flourishes that may be fun for the actors to play with but could leave the viewers cold and detached. This means that there is little emotional engagement with many of the cast making this a very technical exercise. It’s not vacuous but maybe not the deep dive into the murky and pretentious world of art dealing that was intended either. Definitely style over substance and worth a watch.
American Night is available on digital platforms.
