They Call Me Jeeg

They Call Me Jeeg (Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot) is a 2015 Italian superhero film directed by and starring Claudio Santamaria in the lead role. The plot concerns a lonely misanthropic crook named Enzo, who gets superhuman strength after being affected by radioactive waste in the Tiber waters.

The film is a tribute to the anime and manga series Steel Jeeg (Jeeg robot d'acciaio in Italy, where it is very popular) by Gō Nagai, from which takes up some thematics; the title is an in-joke based on the Alessia character who believes that the hero of the anime, Hiroshi Shiba, exists in the real world, and she mistakes Enzo for him. The title is also a reference to the spaghetti western film They Call Me Trinity.

It received largely positive critical reviews and was nominated for several film industry awards, including seventeen David di Donatello, winning eight. The film was also selected as the Italian entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 89th Academy Awards but it was not nominated.

After a successful run in Italian theaters in 2016, the movie got a limited release in the US starting March 17, 2017 by Uncork’d Entertainment, while as of July 2017 it is available on Netflix.

Plot
In a contemporary Rome stricken by a series of terrorist attacks, Enzo Ceccotti is a thief who lives in Rome's slum, Tor Bella Monaca. One day, he is chased by two policemen for stealing a wristwatch, and in order to escape from them he jumps into the Tiber. When Enzo tries to get out, he comes into contact with radioactive waste after he accidentally breaks a submerge barrel. Spending a night of fever, vomiting and cold chills, he wakes up in the morning totally healed, albeit with a persistent cough.

At this point, Enzo decides to sell the watch to Sergio, who works for Fabio Cannizzaro, known as "The Gipsy"; an unstable, crazy gangster with a hunger for fame and a psychopathic predilection for violence. Sergio ends up taking him on a job which is supposed to involve extracting cocaine from inside a pair of extra-communitarian drug mule brothers. While stopping at Sergio's home, Enzo meets his daughter Alessia, a girl with an apparent psychological disorder who escapes reality by continuously watching the Steel Jeeg anime and relating everything to it. When Sergio and Enzo take the drug smugglers to the top of a building under construction, one of them dies from an overdose due to a cocaine-containing egg breaking in his stomach. After Sergio refuses to take the overdosing brother to a hospital, the other brother grabs Sergio's gun and shoots Sergio. Sergio, before dying, is able to kill the brother, while Enzo falls from the building but incredibly survives.

At home, Enzo discovers he has acquired exceptional strength, the reason for his healing ability. That night, he steals an entire ATM and is filmed by a security camera; the surveillance video goes viral and Enzo is nicknamed as a super-criminal by the press, although no one knows his true identity. Meanwhile, Gipsy discovers that Sergio has not returned with the cocaine yet, which the gang bought from a Camorra clan led by female boss Nunzia Lo Cosimo, the true author of the attacks in the city. Gipsy must get the cocaine back or pay Nunzia off, so he and his gang invade Sergio's place but only find his daughter Alessia. Enzo comes to her rescue by crushing Gipsy’s posse, and Alessia mistakes him for Hiroshi Shiba, the hero of Steel Jeeg.

Enzo, a reticent, socially isolated and withdrawn ex-felon who wants to lives in solitude, takes Alessia to a residential care home, where she had previously stayed while her father was in prison. Later, finding information written on a piece of paper hidden in Sergio's spectacle case, Enzo robs the valuable content of an armored truck; the same truck that Gipsy and his gang are about to assault in order to repay the Camorra clan. This increases the infamy of the mystery super-criminal, making Gipsy jealous. Shortly thereafter, two agents of law enforcement bring Alessia to Enzo's house, as they found her wandering on the highway, and Enzo finally decides to take care of her. At night, while Alessia and Enzo are watching a Steel Jeeg episode, Alessia experiences an emotional breakdown, revealing to Enzo that she had suffered sexual abuse in the past.

Gipsy's gang begins to crumble as his best soldier begins to question his leadership and insists that the gang resort to taking money from a local loan-shark in order to pay the debt to Nunzia. Gipsy, aspiring to be a famous and powerful crime boss and insulted by both his soldier's insolence and the thought of resorting to taking money from a loan-shark, responds by having the soldier mauled to death by his rottweilers. However, Gipsy himself nonetheless eventually borrows money from the loan-shark, a Brazilian transsexual named Marcellone. While meeting with Marcellone, Gipsy is attacked by Nunzia and her gang; in the ensuing clash, only Gipsy and Nunzia survive.

Alessia and Enzo become closer, and Enzo begins to develop feelings for her. However, when Enzo has sex with her in the dressing room of a clothes shop, Alessia is reminded of her traumatic past sexual abuse. She becomes angry with Enzo, and in an ensuing argument Enzo reveals to her the truth about her father's death. Alessia flees in anger and boards a trolley, but Enzo, having fallen in love with her, stops the trolley with his superhuman strength, apologizes, and takes Alessia away with him. This is filmed by the passengers, and the videos are seen by Gipsy, who discovers the identity of the famous super-criminal. With the rest of his gang having been killed by Nunzia and her men, the increasingly unhinged Gipsy and his assistant Tazzina kidnap Alessia and Enzo and threaten to kill the captive Alessia unless Enzo reveals how he obtained his powers. Enzo is forced to take Gipsy to the Tiber quay, but at that moment Nunzia arrives with her gang. In the subsequent gunfight Alessia is fatally shot and, in her last moments, asks Enzo to swear to use his powers for good and "save the people". Gipsy is burned alive by Nunzia with a flamethrower and falls into the Tiber waters, apparently dead. The next day, he emerges alive from the river, scarred and burned but with superpowers like Enzo. He goes to Naples and massacres Nunzia and all her gang, filming himself during the act and spreading the video on the web.

After Alessia's death, while wandering alone, Enzo witnesses a traffic accident involving a woman and her young daughter and manages to save the latter from the wreckage of the burning car. Later, Enzo sees Gipsy's video on the news. In the video, Gipsy threatens to set off a bomb in the Stadio Olimpico. Enzo finds Gipsy at the stadium and the two engage in battle. Unable to defuse the bomb however, Enzo grabs it and throws himself into the Tiber from the Musica-Armando Trovajoli bridge along with Gipsy, who is killed in the explosion.

Enzo, now considered dead and exalted as a hero, watches over Rome from the Colosseum and, now determined to protect the city, wears the Jeeg mask that Alessia had knitted for him.

Cast

 * Claudio Santamaria as Enzo Ceccotti / "Jeeg"
 * Luca Marinelli as Fabio Cannizzaro / The Gipsy
 * Ilenia Pastorelli as Alessia
 * Stefano Ambrogi as Sergio
 * Maurizio Tesei as Biondo
 * Francesco Formichetti as Sperma
 * Daniele Trombetti as Tazzina
 * Antonia Truppo as Nunzia
 * Gianluca Di Gennaro as Antonio
 * Salvatore Esposito as Vincenzo

Reception
They Call Me Jeeg received positive reviews from critics, who praised Santamaria, Marinelli, and Pastorelli's performances, the screenplay, and the "township" setting. MoviePlayer gave the film 3.5 stars out of 5, calling it "a triumph of pure cinema, writing, acting, ability to stage and productive obstinacy". Film critic Massimo Bertarelli (it) called it "a masterpiece, to watch at all costs [...] full of fun", praising Santamaria, Marinelli, and Pastorelli's performances. Jay Weissberg from Variety praised the film, calling it "surprisingly gritty and thoroughly enjoyable". After its US release, the film received a 67% score on Rotten Tomatoes, based on nine reviews (6 "Fresh" and 3 "Rotten"), with an average rating of 6.8/10.

Legacy
A comic book based on the film, produced by Lucky Red and La Gazzetta dello Sport, was published in 2016. The comic book is written by Roberto Recchioni, drawn by Giorgio Pontrelli and Stefano Simeone, and with the cover arts by Giacomo Bevilacqua, Leo Ortolani and Zerocalcare, and it takes place after the events of the movie.