L'istruttoria è chiusa: dimentichi is a well-crafted prison melodrama, with Nero's bourgeois innocent discovering just how far his money will get him behind bars when decides to turn to the joint's incarcerated mafia connection for assistance. Turi Ferro is particularly good as the lead guard, who convincingly argues with Nero in the film's penultimate scene that the two of them are on the same side, whether he wants to hear it or not. But while I enjoyed the film, I felt the same thing I identified in my previous post: that this film offers so few surprises in its approach to overly familiar material that it's a shame so many competently crafted working parts are being used in service of something every one of us has seen already.
Perché si uccide un magistrato is the scrappiest of the trio of films here. The film fails to fully exploit the intriguing idea of a political filmmaker depicting the death of a fictionalized standin for an allegedly mobbed-up politician who is soon similarly executed in real life. However, this tale of warring factions within the mafia trying to figure out who amongst them did the deed does do what I kept criticizing the other two films for not doing, and that's come up with a more novel idea than just depicting what we'd expect from such a set-up.
SpoilerShow
All three of these films end with what I'd call defeatism, not cynicism, but this one is the most perverse in that it forces Nero's hopeless idealist to admit that while the mafia are guilty of so much they'll never be punished for, they had nothing to do with the crime at the heart of the film.