The Traitor

Director: Marco Bellocchio

Country/Distributor: Italy/France/Germany/Brazil, Sony Pictures Classics

Opening: January 31

ANOTHER ELEGIAC GANGSTER FILM by a septuagenarian director, Marco Bellocchio’s Sicilian saga clocks in at a relatively brisk two-and-a-half hours, but, as with its American counterpart, The Irishman, it spans continents and decades while casting a retrospective eye over the iniquities of the Cosa Nostra during one of its temporary if spectacular decimations. Dense and brooding, but, like Scorsese’s film, vigorously told, The Traitor also unfolds under the looming shadow of mortality, of time running out for aging kingpins, and of debts coming due.

At the center, a superb Pierfrancesco Favino plays Tommaso Buscetta,