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The ads for "Code of Silence" look schlocky, and Chuck Norris is still identified with a series of grade-zilch karate epics, but this is a heavy-duty thriller - a slick, energetic movie with good performances and a lot of genuine human interest. It grabs you right at the start with a complicated triple-cross, and then it develops into a stylish urban action picture with sensational stunts. How sensational? How about an unfaked fight on top of a speeding elevated train, ending when both fighters dive off the train into the Chicago River?

The stunts are great, but not surprising; Chuck Norris is famous for the stunts he features in all of his movies. What is surprising is the number of interesting characters in "Code of Silence." The screenplay doesn't give us the usual cardboard clichés; there's a lot of human life here, in a series of carefully crafted performances. For once, here's a thriller that realizes we have to care about the characters before we care about their adventures.

Chuck Norris stars as a veteran Chicago vice cop named Cusack. He's a straight arrow, an honest cop that his partners call a "one-man army." As the film opens, he's setting up a drug bust, but a Latino gang beats him to it, stealing the money and the drugs and leaving a roomful of dead gangsters. That sets off a Chicago mob war between the Italian and Latino factions, and as bodies pile up in the streets, Cusack begins to worry about the daughter of a Mafia chieftain - a young artist named Diana ( Molly Hagan ) who wants nothing to do with her father's business, but finds she can't be a bystander. After an elaborate cat-and-mouse chase through the Loop, she's kidnapped and Cusack wants to save her.

Meanwhile, the movie has an interesting subplot about a tired veteran cop ( Ralph Foody ) who accidentally has shot and killed a Latino kid while chasing some mobsters through a tenement. The veteran's young partner (Joseph Guzaldo) watches him plant a gun on the dead kid and claim that the shooting was in self-defense. It's up to the rookie, backed up by Cusack, to decide what he'll say at the departmental hearing.

The movie has a knack for taking obligatory scenes and making them more than routine. Among the small acting gems in the movie is the performance of Chicago actor Nathan Davis as Felix Scalese, a wrinkled, wise old Mafia godfather who sits on his yacht in Burnham Harbor and counsels against a mob war - to no avail. Mike Genovese plays the mob chief whose daughter is kidnapped, and his first scene, as he wishes his wife happy birthday while hurrying out the door to do battle, is wonderfully timed. Foody has some nice scenes as the tired old cop, hanging around a bar talking big and looking scared.

Holding all of the perfor mances together is Norris' work as Cusack. Bearded, dressed in jeans for undercover street duty, and driving a battered old beater, Norris seems convincing as a cop - with, of course, the degree of heroic exaggeration you need in a role like his. By the end of the film, when he is reduced to functioning as a one-man army, we can't really believe the armored robot tank that he brings into action, but what the hell, we accept it.

Norris resembles Clint Eastwood in his insistence on the barest minimum of dialogue; there's a scene where he quietly, awkwardly tries to comfort the mobster's daughter, and it rings completely true. He also seems to be doing a lot of his own stunts, and although the credits list a lot of stuntmen and they were all obviously kept busy, it looks to me like that's really Norris on top of that L train.

The movie was directed by Andy Davis , a former Chicagoan who was a cinematographer on Haskell Wexler's 1968 Chicago film " Medium Cool ," and returned to some of the same Uptown locations to open this picture. (See Moviescope.) Davis' directorial debut was the locally produced, low-budget " Stony Island " (1977), which had moments of truth and insight but nothing like the assurance he shows this time; "Code of Silence" is a thriller so professional that it has the confidence to go for drama and humor as well as thrills. It may be the movie that moves Norris out of the ranks of dependable action heroes and makes him a major star.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film Credits

Code of Silence (1985)

101 minutes

Nathan Davis as Felix Scalese

Chuck Norris as Eddie Cusack

Bert Remsen as Cmdr. Kates

Henry Silva as Luis Comacho

Molly Hagan as Diana Luna

Ralph Foody as Cragie

Mike Genovese as Tony Luna

Directed by

Produced by.

• Raymond Wagner

Screenplay by

• Michael Butler
• Dennis Shryack
• David Frank
• Peter Parasheles
• Christopher Holmes

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Una Femmina – The Code of Silence

Una femmina.

VERDICT : A young woman learns her family is linked to the ‘Ndrangheta crime syndicate and other horrors in an authentically harrowing drama shot in Calabria.

Deborah Young

February 18th, 2022

PRODUCTION / FUNDING Italy

Una femmina – The Code of Silence lands in Berlin

by  Vittoria Scarpa

20/01/2022 - Francesco Costabile’s debut film will be presented within the Panorama section of the 72nd Berlinale before hitting Italian cinemas on 17 February

Based upon journalist Lirio Abbate ’s investigative book “Fimmine ribelli” (published by Bur Rizzoli) examining female victims of violence in families belonging to Calabria’s 'Ndrangheta, Una femmina – The Code of Silence   [ + see also: trailer interview: Francesco Costabile film profile ] marks the feature film debut of Francesco Costabile (Cosenza, class of 1980) which international critics and audiences will get the opportunity to enjoy in a premiere at the upcoming Berlin Film Festival , where it has been selected for the Panorama section.

Already the author of several short films and documentaries (including Dentro Roma , which won the Silver Ribbon for Best Short, and In A Future April (The Young Pasolini)   [ + see also: trailer film profile ] , a doc about Pier Paolo Pasolini which was awarded a Special Mention at the 16th Biografilm Festival in Bologna), the 41-year-old Calabrian director also signs his name to the screenplay – born out of an idea by Lirio Abbate and the director of Indivisibile   [ + see also: film review trailer interview: Edoardo de Angelis film profile ] Edoardo De Angelis – alongside the very same Abbate, Serena Brugnolo and Adriano Chiarelli .

Rosa is a restless and rebellious girl who lives with her grandmother and uncle in a Calabrian village, nestled between mountains and dry rivers. Her daily life is suddenly upturned by a matter which resurfaces from her past, a trauma which inextricably links her to her mother’s mysterious death. When Rosa realises her fate has all but been decided, she chooses to betray her family and seek out her own blood feud. But when your family is part of ‘Ndrangheta, each and every move can prove fatal.

“We couldn’t have found a more fitting international premiere”, Costabile enthused. “ Una femmina - The Code of Silence is a film where the violence enacted upon women’s bodies is central to the story. Rosa’s story is that of many women who rebel against an all but decided fate. It’s an honour for me to make my debut in a festival which is so sensitive to gender politics”.

The cast includes Lina Siciliano, Fabrizio Ferracane (whom we’ll also be seeing in Paolo Taviani’s film Leonora Addio   [ + see also: film review trailer interview: Paolo Taviani film profile ] at the very same festival), Anna Maria De Luca ( Padrenostro   [ + see also: film review trailer interview: Claudio Noce film profile ] ) and Simona Malato ( The Macaluso Sisters   [ + see also: film review trailer film profile ] ), alongside Luca Massaro, Mario Russo, Vincenzo Di Rosa and Francesca Ritrovato .

Una femmina - The Code of Silence is produced by Attilio De Razza, Pierpaolo Verga, Nicola Picone and Edoardo De Angelis on behalf of Tramp Limited and O' Groove , in collaboration with Medusa Film and Prime Video, and with the support of the Italian Ministry of Culture . The movie will hit Italian cinemas on 17 February, courtesy of Medusa.

(Translated from Italian)

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The Code of Silence - Una femmina

The Code of Silence

• Francesco Costabile
• Italian with English subtitles
• 120 minutes

Q&A with Francesco Costabile on June 11

A woman attempts to reconcile the mysteries of her past with the dangers of her present in Francesco Costabile’s gripping and personal solo feature debut (from a story co-written by Open Roads veteran Edoardo De Angelis). Rosa (Lina Siciliano) has spent all her life in a small Calabrian village, raised there by her grandmother after her mother’s death when she was a child. Now an adult, Rosa grows increasingly curious about the true circumstances of that mysterious event, and seeks to uncover the truth—an act of excavation that leads her to ever-more-concerning epiphanies about the dynamics within her family and its possible ties to the ’Ndrangheta, a notorious Calabrian crime syndicate. An enthralling portrait both of courage and resistance in the face of shadowy, oppressive forces, and of Calabria itself.

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Code of Silence

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Code of Silence

• A Chicago cop is caught in the middle of a gang war while his own comrades shun him because he wants to take down an irresponsible cop.
• Eddie Cusack is a Chicago police officer about to bust some members of the Comacho gang when the gang is shot up by a rival drug gang from the neighboring building, led by Tony Luna. Victor Comacho is the only survivor of the Comacho gang and his older brother, Luis, who is the leader of the gang, retaliates by killing Luna's family and kidnaps Luna's daughter, Diana. Cusack must face Tony Luna and Luis Comacho alone because nobody on the police force is willing to help him since he was the only cop who broke the code of silence by testifying against a fellow cop who killed an unarmed teenager, but Cusack is not really alone. A police robot called "Prowler" aides Cusack as he takes down the gangs. — Anonymous
• Chuck Norris plays a tough, honest, Chicago cop. He gets trapped in the middle of an Italian-American mob war and tries to rescue an innocent kidnap victim. An underlying plot is Norris bucking the department over a questionable shooting of an Italian-American kid by a veteran cop. The only witness is a young police officer. — Scott Lane <[email protected]>
• Eddie Cusack is an honest cop, who was conducting an operation involving some Columbian drug dealers. Now someone attacks the Columbians, killing all of them, and in the melee, one of the cops shoots a boy. He then proceeds to plant a gun on the boy. Now the brother of the Columbians, wants revenge on the one who did this. It turns out that the one responsible is the relative of a local mobster, he runs away when the retaliation starts. Most of his family was killed except for one daughter who doesn't exactly like what her father does. Cusack manages to save her and gives her some protection. Now the cop who shot the boy is given a hearing to determine if he was responsible. At the hearing Cusack denounces him. He then learns that the girl's been grabbed by the Columbian, he goes to help her but no one in the police department is willing to help him. He has to help her own his own. — [email protected]
• Eddie Cusack is a tough Chicago policeman facing two crises stemming from a bloodily botched narcotics sting. The first involves a war that ensues between the gang of Tony Luna and Felix Scalese against Columbian "businessman" Luis Comacho, a war that sweeps up Tony Luna's daughter. The second involves Cusack's new partner, Kopalas; during the botched sting Kopalas witnessed another cop, a burned-out alcoholic named Craigie, shoot and kill an innocent youth then plant a gun on the youth, and Kopalas is torn because he fears breaking the code of silence that exists among his fellow Chicago cops - a code of silence that sweeps up Cusack when, at a civilian review board he testifies against Craigie, and is abandoned by his fellow cops when Luna's daughter is kidnapped by Comacho, Cusack is badly beaten by Comacho's gang, and Cusack must settle the gang war (and rescue the girl) once and for all with a "borrowed" robot police tank. — Michael Daly

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