The Family

Story: Former Mafia boss Giovanni Manzoni (De Niro) and family are relocated to a nondescript town in Normandy as part of an FBI Witness Protection Program. With their changed identities and a new life, will they be able to adapt and keep the past from catching up.

Review: There’s a code, the Omertà included, that you’ll find critical to most Mafia films - loyalty, keeping your friends close, your enemies closer and so on. But there’s also that bit about not bringing matters about the mean streets home to discuss at the dinner table. Meaning, keeping ‘work’ and home as separate entities. However, the Manzoni family has everyone in on the violence. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and Giovanni and Maggie’s (Pfeiffer) kids Belle (Agron) and Warren (D’Leo) inherit their dad’s habit for mafioso-grade violence.

Across the Atlantic from their native Brooklyn, they could very well be on another planet. Maggie finds the French obsession with cream as a cooking ingredient distasteful and Giovanni (renamed ‘Fred’ by the Feds) finds his French neighbours too prying and full of Continental arrogance.

The comedy, however, ends here and matters become serious. The local priest shuns Maggie from the Church after she confesses their past, Fred soon starts killing and breaking the bones of anyone who gives him a hard time and Warren is expelled from school after charges of corruption, smuggling and drugs pile up; in essence, a mini Mafia.

And their past, like the proverbial wolf that’s always at the door, is never too far behind despite the grave and unsmiling Agent Stansfield’s (Tommy Lee Jones, whose face looks craggier than a mountainside) best attempts to keep their cover from blowing.

It’s a little-known fact that Pfeiffer had failed the audition to star opposite De Niro in Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull. She’s managed it after 30 years and for a movie as good as this, it was totally worth it.