November 2011, Rome. The notorious Suburra district is the scene of an ambitious real estate project called Waterfront, conceived as a new Las Vegas, which involves the state, the Vatican and the Mafia. In seven days, the mechanics disrupt the lives of a handful of people: Magradi, a parliamentarian, a homeless man called Number 8 and his addict girlfriend, a call girl named Sabrina, and the mysterious Samurai, a representative of the most feared faction of organized crime in the capital.

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Suburra seems too overdone to be taken seriously, in the end resembling a dark and rainy best-of video clip featuring the electro music of M83. Best known for the television series Romanzo Criminale and Gomorrah, Italian director Stefano Sollima paints a grim picture of the mechanisms that animate a Rome that is plagued by egos and human folly sourced equally from politics, religion, crime and lust. Except that this refrain, as thorough as it may be presented, is too well known and therefore too banal to elicit real emotions, thanks largely to the artificial staging, which uses and abuses atmospheric settings and slick shots. Far from being the great tragedy announced by an artificial countdown (intertitles list the number of days to go before the Apocalypse) Suburra is just another movie about the mob and human decay; it is neither thrilling nor bad, just forgettable.