Last Night of Amore * * * *

When you dance down the street with the stars at your feet...

This film is featuring in the Italian Film Festival which is currently on, but I'm pretty sure it'll be hanging around long after the Festival is finished. The good ones usually do.

Franco Amore is a cop who has done thirty five years of service. In that time he has never had reason to use his gun.  He takes pride in that.  He's a seasoned cop and a man who dearly loves his wife.  On his last night they are having a party at his home with friends and family.  Though, as he is still officially employed until midnight, he is still "on-call" if need be.   And the call comes...

With apologies to his guests,  Franco leaves, saying that hopefully he will  return soon.  As viewers we are keen to find out what the situation is.  But then we cut to ten days earlier.  We learn that Franco has a part-time job as a driver and body-guard for his wife's cousin Cosimo, a man who deals in watches and diamonds.  Franco doesn't ask too many questions about the items that Cosimo trades.  He just does his job. But one night something goes very wrong for one of Cosimo's clients and Amore has the skills to save his life.  

Grateful and indebted the client offers Franco a very lucrative position when he retires but he must do one job for him prior to that. It's pretty straight forward; it's just that it has to be done on the night when Franco Amore retires.  

Aha! we think. So that's why he left his own party.

The straight forward job turns out to be anything but, and soon things go very wrong.  A simple task of collecting two people from the airport and driving them to a location turns into a nightmare as they are followed by another vehicle and then pulled over by the cops.  The passengers, whom Franco has collected, are carrying contraband in the form of a bag full of diamonds. Other people want to get their hands on that bag of diamonds and will happily kill to do so.

Franco finds himself in a situation where tragedy has happened, but he can still get away and save his own skin, if he can get some assistance.  He makes a phone call...

Cut back to the party and now his wife says she must excuse herself as she speeds off to help Franco.

Other than the backstory, most of the action of Last Night of Amore is is set over one night. And a lot of it is set in a motorway underpass. 

Last Night of Amore is a tense and exciting drama with non-linear editing that works effectively, even though the story is somewhat implausible at times with an ending that is almost a bit too neat to comfortably accept.  To be honest, I wasn't sure if I should be happy for Franco or if I should be quite disgusted with him!