1. Nesbitt10

   9

   Gomorrah is the Biblical city synonymous with unrepentant sinners. As title of the Italian film "Gomorrah", it is a chilling descriptor and a play on words of the "Camorra"- the organized crime syndicate that controls the city of Naples and the surrounding countryside. Detailing daily life inside a criminal state--it's a new sort of gangster film for America to ponder. No matter how many mafia films you have seen, you have never seen anything like "Gomorrah." It is a desolate film--devoid of hope, and explores a brutally violent way of life with no heroes, just victims.
   The film is based on Roberto Saviano's book "Gomorrah" (2006 Bestseller)-a first-person journey into the many hearts of the beast, and to this day lives under police protection. The film retains the book's you-are-there immersion. But director Matteo Garrone splinters the narrative, then traces it along different commercial channels industrial waste disposal, the garment business, construction, and the drug wars.
   Poison is the lifeblood of what Saviano simply refers to as "The System"-crack cocaine, chemical waste, tainted money, and creeping corruption. "Gomorrah" opens with a standard-issue mob hit and then, without ever pausing to explain who wanted whom dead, goes on to map the web of relations by which the Camorra ensnares its subjects (many of whom are played by nonprofessional locals). Crime bosses and crooked pols are off-screen. Instead, we have the residents of a vast, moldering housing estate in Scampia, a Naples suburb reputedly home to the world's largest open-air drug market. A model for disastrous urban planning in its failed attempt to provide light and space for its inhabitants. Set in the middle of nowhere, this poured-concrete maze is part Aztec pyramid, part minimum-security pen. Narrow catwalks and alleys, placing kids in cavities of the structure as lookouts, as delivery boys, as enforcers. "Gomorrah" draws a generational line to connect middle-aged men to young ones. It's easy to see how a kid like Tito (Salvatore Abruzzese), the delivery boy for drug dealers, could possibly become a toxic-waste baron like Franco (Toni Servillo) or, worse, a middleman like Ciro. Any way you cut it, these kids don't have a chance.
   Garrone skips from one Camorra scam to another, all plots climaxing amid inexplicable warfare in a more or less simultaneous reckoning. "Gomorrah's" episodic structure is in some ways comparable to Steven Soderbergh's "Traffic." Despite its vivid characterizations, the movie stays on the surface-or, rather, it maintains a feel of "street level occupation." The undistinguished visual style is predicated on a jittery wide-screen SteadiCam. There's a sense that Garrone's bobbing and weaving camera is just hanging with the homies-a strategy used by Saviano in his first-person book.
   While the movie is yet another saga of killing and corruption--unlike so many of its ancestors, from "Scarface" to "Goodfellas," the crime is organized around money--yet we never sense any riches. Matteo Garrone is an exhilarating filmmaker, but "Gomorrah" is not a sensationalistic film. Two younger boys often quote Al Pacino in "Scarface"--and some of the thugs have a hip-hop sensibility, but the fabulousness of "gangsta life" is merely a mirage that insults the day-to-day realities. It's a chilling experience, to sit comfortably in our chairs watching the ugliness that human nature can dish out. When a man on a motorbike pulls alongside a moving sedan and opens fire, it's not the thrill of violence you feel. It's the awful shock, the immediacy of the disruption. Nothing sweet or serene in this movie stays that way for long. There is no Hollywood gloss, or international stars involved in the project. Just a sense of gritty realism that pierces through a bullet proof vest, should we be fortunate enough to be wearing one.… Collapse

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2. ImUnavailable

   8

   A grim and uncompromising look at the human cost of the Italian criminal underworld. It is undeniably well directed and well acted. The multiple plots give scope to the story even if it does meanders occasionally.… Expand

   • Helpful? 0 of 0 users said Yes.
3. Jeffjef

   5

   Completely overrated. how can so many film critics get this completely wrong. the only strong point is that it has good cinematography. you know where the plot is going and don't feel a connection to anyone because of the way the story is told.… Expand

   • Helpful? 1 of 2 users said Yes.
4. VeganApe

   3

   Convincing cinema verite but wandering, indulgent...at times random-feeling succession of non-sequiturs.

   • Helpful? 0 of 1 users said Yes.

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