A Mafia Daydream Crashes Into Reality

Read Time:5 Minute, 43 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Don Q
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Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Year Released: 2023, 2025
Runtime: 1h 48m
Director(s): Claudio Bellante
Writer(s): Claudio Bellante, Michael Domino
Cast: Armand Assante, Chuck Zito, Saundra Santiago, Federico Castelluccio, Vincent Pastore, Alesandra Assante, Frank Aquilino
Where to Watch: on UK digital September 15, 2025

RAVING REVIEW: DON Q opens with a man who never stopped narrating his life like a legend. Al Quinto’s days are small—errands, conversations, rituals—but in his head they add up to a coronation. He’s convinced he’s the one who can restore Little Italy to a version of itself that probably never existed, the way he imagines. That gap between the story he tells and the one the neighborhood is living is the film’s heartbeat, and it’s where both drama and humor are created.

Armand Assante understands that perfectly. He doesn’t treat Al like a punchline; he plays a leader without an army, a tactician without territory, a man who clings to ceremony because ceremony makes him feel necessary. It’s a performance that asks for patience and earns most of it. He can turn a look into a thesis: the pride of a man who thinks the block looks to him, followed by the hurt when it keeps moving.

The structure sets up a clean collision. Al’s grandeur runs up against an actual threat when Rocco storms back into the district. Rocco’s presence makes Al’s fantasy operation fail; suddenly, there are sides, territory, and a younger recruit willing to listen. On paper, it’s a clever way to yank delusion into reality. In practice, the movie lets this phase sprawl. Scenes that should be turning screws often linger as if waiting for the tension to arrive. The push-pull between imagination and consequence is the core of the idea; stretching it thin weakens both.

Claudio Bellante’s direction reveals a genuine affection for the place. The camera appreciates the cramped storefronts and unglamorous corners, and you can sense the production’s affection for neighborhood fixtures. That affection gives the film a pulse—history doesn’t just live in exposition; it sits on a windowsill or inside a glass case behind the register. When the movie leans into that texture, it feels confident.

Where the film lands is in its portraits of people who are tired of propping up a myth; Saundra Santiago plays Al’s sister with a palpable weariness. She’s not a skeptic of loyalty; she’s a skeptic of the story that loyalty demands she keep telling. The scenes between them are the movie’s core. She keeps asking a simple question: What would living actually look like if you stopped posing?

Elsewhere, the ensemble is less consistent. A couple of supporting roles have a stagey stiffness that shakes the illusion. That matters because the film depends on credible social interactions; if those ties don’t feel lived-in, Al’s fantasy becomes a solo act instead of a neighborhood drama. A stronger baseline of performances would give the movie what it keeps reaching for: the sense that every corner of the block remembers a different version of the past, and all of them are tugging at Al at once.

Narratively, the film wants to be a comedy of delusions that corners itself into tragedy. That’s a potent arc, and you can see it trying to surface. The problem is pacing. Midway through the film, there are stretches where the plot stalls instead of advancing. Scenes repeat emotional beats without reshaping them, which blurs the path to the climax. When the final movement arrives, it’s staged and thematically on target—the friction between the world in Al’s head and the consequences on the street finally catches fire. If the earlier passages had compressed the build, that ending would land even harder.

The premise doesn’t need breadth; it requires pressure. Letting smaller conversations double as turning-points—where loyalty frays, where a recruit stops pretending to believe—would move the story along and deepen character at once. Keep the rituals, but make each one cost more. The film toggles between Al’s self-mythology and the neighborhood’s reality. When that switch is crisp, the movie sings. A clearer visual or aural signature for Al’s interior world—something woven into the grammar, not added as garnish—would make the toggling legible without pausing to explain it.

Assante’s work is the difference between a curiosity and a movie with a pulse. He furnishes Al with pride, embarrassment, and an odd grace. He never lets the character become a mascot for a genre. You can see why people might follow him for a block or two—and why, when the shouting stops, they’d go home and lock the door. That ambiguity is the film’s truest note.

DON Q is a small, sincere neighborhood fable with an excellent lead and a handful of strong scenes, but it is undercut by pacing and uneven support. It has a point of view worth hearing and a finale that pays off the premise, even if the route there is a bit wandering. For audiences who enjoy crime stories with a rueful smile and a clear-eyed take on self-mythology, there’s enough here to recommend. For everyone else, it’s an intriguing near-miss—thoughtful, intermittently gripping, and just shy of the sharper, leaner version it keeps hinting at.

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[photo courtesy of REEL2REEL FILMS]

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