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Gomorrah
Universal acclaim
Based on 30 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 23 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Crime | Drama
Written by: Maurizio Braucci
Directed by: Matteo Garrone
Release Date:
Theatrical: February 13, 2009
DVD: November 24, 2009
Running Time: 137 minutes, Color
Origin: Italy
Language(s): Italian | Mandarin | French
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Salvatore Abruzzese, Vincenzo Fabricino, Simone Sacchettino, Salvatore Ruocco, Vincenzo Altamura, Italo Renda, Gianfelice Imparato, and Maria Nazionale
Power, money and blood: these are the values that the residents of the province of Naples and Caserta confront every day. They have practically no choice, and are forced to obey the rules of the "System," the Camorra. Only a lucky few can even think of leading a normal life. Five stories are woven together in this violent scenario, set in a cruel and ostensibly invented world, but one that is deeply rooted in reality. (IFC Films)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
The fingerprints of the Camorra are everywhere, this film wants us to know, and its grip is lethal.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Natasha Senjanovic
Powerful, stripped to its very essence and featuring a spectacular cast (of mostly non-professionals), Matteo Garrone's sixth feature film Gomorra goes beyond Tarrantino's gratuitous violence and even Scorsese's Hollywood sensibility in depicting the everyday reality of organized crime's foot soldiers.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Naples-born Servillo is a national star, famed as a theater, opera, and film director as well as an actor. And he's got the face of a mensch (or a Madoff) -- which makes his embodiment of criminal banality all the more identifiable, as well as horrifying.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss and Mary Corliss
Probably the bleakest, least sentimental study of the Mafia in Italian or American film history.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Gomorrah looks grimy and sullen, and has no heroes, only victims. That is its power.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
The characters in Gomorrah may lack an extra dramatic dimension: Garrone errs, if anything, on the side of detachment. Yet that detachment is also the key to the film's success. There's so little hooey and melodramatic head-banging here.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Walter Addiego
This is a vision of hell conveyed in a simple, documentary style, far removed from the sumptuous American Mafia fables.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Jan Stuart
This vibrantly disorienting cinematic import reinvents the vocabulary of the crime drama with a painterly eye and a feverish documentary style.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jennie Punter
An unforgettable portrayal of the unglamorous gangster life, which is often short and never sweet.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
For Americans, Gomorrah will play like every other Mafia epic - and no other Mafia epic.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Gomorrah takes place in a world where decency can't take root and we can only watch in horror as crime overwhelms society's most vulnerable-- women, children, law-abiding citizens, and the conscientious few who want to get out of the game.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
Part of what's bracing about Gomorrah, and makes it feel different from so many American crime movies, is both its deadly serious take on violence and its global understanding of how far and wide the mob's tentacles reach, from high fashion to the very dirt.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
This film never feels like copycat Americana to me. Its vision of the bleak, ruined, urban-cum-rural landscape of Naples and environs is distinctively European and postmodern, redolent of the spiritual and physical desolation Antonioni captured so memorably in "Red Desert."
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
The result demands a patient viewing, and maybe more than one; only after a second dose did I get the measure of Garrone's mastery, and realize how far he has surpassed, not merely honored, the author's courageous toil.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
This isn't some pomo arthouse picture looking to score points by subverting the gangster paradigm; it's a killer film about killers who idolize film but are unable or unwilling to parse the doom that always crops up come Act III.
Read Full Review >New York Post V.A. Musetto
The film's disclosure that Camorra money is involved with the reconstruction of New York City's Ground Zero will give viewers something to think about.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
So fasten your seat belts for Gomorrah, just snubbed in the wussy Oscar race for Best Foreign Film (so you know it's dynamite).
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
A frightening portrait of corruption, cynicism, intimidation, greed and violence, Gomorrah is tough stuff.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
The sense of inescapability, the mood of capitulation and resignation, becomes the story. What is being made clear is the thoroughgoing rot of a civilization; there is literally no place to find peace, solace or consolation.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Garrone's messy storytelling compounds an already messy history. He's a powerful filmmaker, though, and a fearless one.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
The malignity can be oppressive -- this is a far cry from Fellini finding poignant uplift in the slums -- but the dramatic structure is complex, the details are instructive, and the sense of tragedy is momentous.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
This corrosive, slapdash, grimly exciting exposé of organized crime in and around Naples comes on like "Mean Streets" cubed.
Read Full Review >Empire Damon Wise
A sombre, slow, but well-paced study of organised crime in urban Naples that leaves a very grim taste in the mouth.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ella Taylor
The five interwoven narratives in this visceral but disciplined and beautifully acted movie show to devastating effect how ordinary men and women -- and especially vulnerable boys desperate for masculine role models -- get caught up in the seductive violence and are ruthlessly destroyed by the network's hardened henchmen.
Read Full Review >Variety Jay Weissberg
Utilizing a mesmerizing documentary style that studiously avoids glamorizing the horrors, Garrone cherrypicks episodes from Saviano's muckraking tract, building to a chillingly matter-of-fact crescendo of violence, though interwoven tales tend to dissipate the full force of the criminal Camorra families' insidious control.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
It's all about waste and destruction, and not just the toxic waste -- illegally dumped in landfills -- that is poisoning the farmland and the aquifers in the region.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Given the breadth of the story, the characters never achieve much depth, but they're part of a larger pattern: the younger ones are eager to find their way into the organization while the older ones are desperate to find their way out
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
Gomorrah isn't memorable. The structure feels random, and the characters remain at arm's length. Next to HBO's "The Wire," which depicted an enormous financial ladder and also brought to life the characters on every rung, the movie is small potatoes: excellent journalism, so-so art.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar
Clearly, Gomorrah is supposed to represent the best of today’s European cinema...and if this is the best, I would hate to imagine the worst! Gomorrah is a boring mess focusing on how the mob in today’s Naples has its tentacles stretched far and wide
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.9 (out of 10) based on 23 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Jay H gave it a6:
Gritty, brutal and very realistically told through the stylish direction of Matteo Garrone. Not a pleasant film, it can be disturbing at times. It's a fine film, but it didn't "wow" me. Good acting. It seemed longer than it's 135 minute length.
caporegime gave it a1:
Movie murdered the gomorrah and also the mafia. If you already know how the mafia works, then you don't have to see this movie because it only contains how they operate.
David S
gave it a2:
I started to read the book and then decided to watch the movie On Demand. What a mistake! If you don't read the book first, you will have no clue what is going on. The only thing that saved the rating from being a zero was the acting.
iain f gave it a9:
It reminded me alot of the film 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, which I'm sure any frequent metacritic user should be familiar with. And believe me, that is a huge compliment. Gommorah gripped me with an unrelenting display of the human side of gang warfare. Although I was a little disapointed by the ending, and it may not be the most memorable film out there, I thought this was a brilliant film. A sign of hope for more to come out of Italian cinema.
nick w gave it a7:
Anyone who lives anywhere (especially in america) has to take a look at how clean their day to day living is; the only thing that keeps us safe is our ignorance.
Colin T. Black gave it a7:
Completely got what the movie was going for, I was sold on the documentary style, and didn't fight it nor did I miss the typical genre-conventions, but films like City of God and TV shows like The Wire have done it better. With that being said the film is definitely one of a kind, but while definitely succeeding in being a voyeuristic and informational tour, another reviewer stated "it is difficult to tell who is who, what they are doing and why." Couldn't agree more. And I did feel like the less is more ethos is somewhat of a cop-out, so the film could look mumbled & fumbled all in the name of cinematic style and POV not quite a more truthful telling... the Director may not of been competent enough to interweave a truly-realistic yet truly-compelling narrative.
robert i. gave it an8:
An unblinking look into the abyss, where clan loyalty has become outright war, drawing in children, youth, the respectable middle-aged. Who can escape the pull of the mob, when the mob rules? Excellent and unsentimental verismo.
