The post career of a sportsman, follows a pre-established pattern: the technician commentator, the coach, enjoy the money and the actor. For the last option, many have tried, people like Johnny Weissmuller, Carlo Pedersoli, Arnold Schwarzenegger and many, many, others. Among them, we find the mundane sportsman of excellence that has raged from late eighties to late nineties: Alberto Tomba. Icon of modern skiing and first skier who has seen more cars than cows.
Tomba, at the end of a great career, decided to try to get in the history of cinema. And in a sense he succeeded.
This is legendary movie, considered one of the worst Italian films of all time, "Alex L'Ariete" fight this title head to head with "Troppo Belli", and has become famous because of the inadequacy from every point of view.
The director Damiano Damiani, big name in cinema from the late sixties onwards (he directed such as "Quien Sabe?", "The Day of the Owl," "Confessione di un commissario di polizia al procuratore della repubblica" and much more) put a big mole in a career obviously full of great works. A film that, that claims another victim excellent, ie Dardano Sacchetti, one of the most famous and popular Italian screenwriters who writes a screenplay though good for a novice, who has seen "007" for the first time.
We had also the doubt that everything was made on purpose in this trashy way, but then we read a bit 'of interviews and then we wondered why two major characters in the film industry should make a bad movie, that does not seem to have auto-irony. No, it does not make sense and this is just a movie completely wrong.
Tomba then it is less expressive of slalom poles and Michelle Hunziker, the female protagonist, is more boring than a song by Eros Ramazzotti, a famous italian singer, at the time her husband.
The champ from Bologna, is transformed here (so to say) in Alessandro Corso said "The Ram", due to his skill and propensity in breaking down doors. Young policeman of GIS, nice, lover of women and little inclined to discipline after a raid in which a colleague loses his life, he was transferred in a a small town where nothing ever happens. If the fmovie  had stopped here, it would have been better, but arrives Antaleva, (Hunziker) beautiful young girl accused of murder that Corso must accompany in a court. The journey is transformed from mundane routine to "terrific" adventure, because she is afraid of falling into a trap.
The twist is that, our hero is alone against all, only with the girl against the bad guys, but in a sense also against the power. Among incredible scenes and lines thrown away, in a scene Tomba seems to read the script, "Alex L'Ariete" slowly became a sort of "007" homemade. Which saying something.
Tomba, doors broke and action scenes aside (it was yes a policeman, but of the sports group), plays exactly himself, without changing one iota of him and his keeping his strong dialectal accent.
Orso Maria Guerrini and Corinne Clery, other big names, complete the cast of a movie in which the director believe, because aside from the sentence that opens this post, Damiani adds: "Having crossed the sporting glory - Damiani says - that gave him joy, satisfaction, but also bitterness, helped him deal with the right step this new commitment. Tomba realized immediately that film, just like sports, can be a source of great joy, but requires sacrifices, and above all obedience "and that the film is "funny light-hearted and sentimental. "
Originally designed as a fiction for "Mediaset" and filmed in 1998, "Alex L'Ariete" is rejected by the TV channel and repeated two years later as a feature film. Its release has been given birth to the "legend" a flop in box office, only 285 spectators in a week, wrote the "Corriere Della Sera" in 2000 and a lot of negative reviews which are flanked by many awards not exciting.
Alberto Tomba, here begins and ends his adventure in the world of cinema, several years later, in 2007, in an interview with Tgcom says he was boycotted because a men like him bothered in the cinema world (?), to have been misused and that he has worked with a good director but very old. Indeed, the transition from fiction feature film must not help the histor, but actually, the cinema industry not miss  Alberto Tomba who also rejects an American TV series.