The Man from Rome is a relatively high-budget but weirdly low-energy ecclesiastical thriller, a faithful adaptation of Arturo Perez Reverte's 1994 novel La Piel del Tambor (international title: The Seville Communion) that fails to convey any of its charms.
The story concerns a small, condemned church in Seville that's hosted a couple of suspicious accidental deaths. That remains a minor issue until a hacker attacks the Vatican servers, infiltrating the Pope's personal computer and leaving a message stating something to the effect that the church will continue killing to defend itself.
So the supreme holiness (Franco Nero!) assigns an agent (Richard Armitage) from the Vatican's intelligence agency to go investigate the matter. Unlike with Nero's other pontifical outing, he doesn't act like a sidekick to the protagonist. Point: The Pope's Exorcist.
Once The Man from Rome arrives in Seville, he discovers things are considerably more complicated. A large conglomerate of interests led by an evil bank is trying to clear out the area the church is in for some real estate development (they must already have demolished all the orphanages and community centers), opposed by a plucky priest and nun duo (Paul Freeman and Alicia Borrachero) plus the beautiful aristocrat (Amaia Salamanca) who's bankrolling them.
Sussing things out takes a while, especially because new complications are added in at every turn; The script is credited to director Sergio Dow, Adrian Bol, Beth Bollinger and another five writers - that's never a good sign - and it manages to cram in most of the plotlines of a twisty, complex five-hundred-page novel into a two-hour runtime. Judging by the result, it wasn't a great idea: the constant churn of developments and revelations trivialize almost everything that happens, with none of the narrative threads ever getting the time or attention needed to develop properly.
It's watchable, though. Armitage makes for a very agreeable protagonist, a soulful Bond-alike: suave, charismatic and ridiculously competent. The backdrops are beautiful, and there's always enough going on to sustain interest, even if the mysteries are a bit of a letdown. I also personally find its 'computers are magic' approach hilarious, as is usual with any attempts to try to represent hacking in a cinematic way. Digital aging visualization programs are part of every hacker's toolkit, because of course they are.
Director Sergio Dow keeps things professional, tasteful and pretty impersonal - there are plenty of nice backdrops (cinematographer: Aitor Mantxola), but none of the shots are really memorable. Same goes for the music by Roque Baños. The acting is a mixed bag, with a lot of Spanish actors struggling to be convincing in a foreign language (everyone speaks English here.) It's a Spanish-Italian-Columbian coproduction shot to its detriment entirely in English to court international markets.
To be honest I've never been a huge fan of this particular novel (even at the time; it came in between La Tabla de Flandes and El Maestro de Esgrima, both of which are much, much better), but it deserved more than this, a slavish translation. People who complain about minor characters getting cut out of the Lord of the Rings movies, take note.
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