Il Mestiere delle armi

An unusual historical film in which everything converges to a point: a technical advance in the mechanisation of weaponry proves decisive, embodied in the fate of a single condottiero, at a moment when medical science lagged behind military technology, and within a broader, “cosmological” context dominated by notions of religion and honour stemming from a distance age, but already feeling something of the modernity that was just beginning to emerge with the writings of the Florentine Machiavelli. With a rich mix of culture and history, perhaps what this lacked was a presentation of the kinds of efforts that led to the invention of the dragonet itself.

The movie premiered four months to the day before another singular, not to say “blockbuster” appropriation of technical apparatus for the means of war would prove equally significant in the history of human conflict. Moreover, watching this for the first time a quarter of a century later (writing in late March 2026), it is impossible not to be aware of the role played by military drone technology and missile interception systems, not to mention low-orbit internet satellite networks and the means to detect their terrestrial terminals, at the forefront of current geopolitical events. Such reflections add to the sense that what Olmi presents here is nothing less than a cinematic discourse on one small chapter in the long and constant evolution of arms, understood as a fundamental factor conditioning the unfolding of our species from prehistory until today, and beyond.