Salvo is a strange, involving, if flawed movie about the Sicilian mafia; a stylised drama with elements of the supernatural and the sentimental amid the tension. It announces Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza as film-makers who might be mentioned alongside Matteo Garrone, the director of Gomorrah. Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri plays Salvo, a mafia "soldier" who finds himself on the receiving end of a horrendous assassination attempt, grippingly and stylishly filmed, which is then followed by an extraordinary, almost real-time sequence as he arrives at the house of the man who schemed his death – then makes a discovery about the person the man lives with, Rita (Sara Serraiocco). It is an event that appears to send Salvo into a kind of breakdown, but one suffered gradually and generally. The temperature in Palermo has risen to a brain-frazzling 40 degrees, and the resulting surge in air-con use has caused the electricity grid to pack up, causing temperature everywhere to climb terrifyingly higher. Perhaps nothing in the film can quite measure up to its bravura opening: the white-knuckle action followed by the eerie strangeness of Salvo's pacing through his would-be assassin's house. But this is a fascinatingly made film.