User Reviews

Garners more respect than a spot on favorites list, "Gomorra" chronicles five seemingly disconnected stories with one thing in common: all are heavily influenced by a criminal organization run by the Camorras, an ominous mafia organization with a tight grip on Naples, Italy. Stylishly delivered, with extra kudos on editing and cinematography, Film will no doubt attract fans of the violent underworld, but might be disappointed by its verite approach, even if it perfectly captures reality, as such. Absolute antithesis to depiction from the American mafia, film is gritty and has zero entertainment value but in retrospect, picture was produced with such depressing intentions.

Multi plot film features more on characters attracted by the allure of the Camorras than the Camorras themselves. The five stories were plucked out from a novel by Roberto Saviano: the non-fiction that thrived on the best seller's list in Italy. Stories range from a coming of age teenager wanting to be identified with the mafia to a fresh university graduate looking for a promising vocation. Through varying levels of perspectives: from the violent eyed to the diplomatic, "Gomorra" stuns as it lists the organization's almost totalitarian control over the underbelly of Italy. It creates the impression of a country rotting from the inside out. With each story written by a different writer, what could have been an interconnection disaster is controlled well by director Matteo Garrone.

Ambitiously edited, fine balance between chaos and narrative is clearly defined by Marco Spoletini. First 40 minutes won't bode well for viewers looking for an easy diversion, as it is edited to confusion creating the illusion that the film started midway. Nonetheless, the stories do emerge, to great relief and from there on out, film would have established its style to a keen audience.

Cinematography, too is top notch. Marco Onorato paints Italy with a dull set of colors, resembling more of a third world purgatory rather than a honeymooner's travel brochure. Even Venice's bright reds and blues are muted with grey and brown with a hint of overexposure. Overall effect adds stupendously to the film as it gives it a sense of space and absolutely squashes any sense of hope an over-reader might derive.

Accuracy is greatly appreciated here. Film tries to blurry lines between dramatic film and documentary with impressive results. Details are all intact: dialogue is accurately more dialect derived, shooting locations seem extracted from a news clip and most thesping is done on dead-on accuracy by first timers.

With production values on stratospheric levels, film's overall intention is transparent: absolutely naught empathy is allowed, allowing audiences to soak in the moody atmosphere and simply co-exist with the protagonists clearly tested by circumstance. This will be its main predicament in garnering a more universal success as it asks a lot from an audience whose expectations might lean towards the slick of "Cidade de Deus".

With everything into consideration, film is too well choreographed that it becomes as intimidating as the organization that it exposes. Multiple plays won't be troublesome as every single detail here has a sense of subtext of tragedy unwilling to be diluted by repetition. However, might only be uncovered by fans willing to revisit.

Picture won the Grand Prize of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.

This is a collection of five stories about people who are touched by the gritty Neapolitan crime world. There is a gang war erupting. Don Ciro is a scared middleman. He is jumped by the other side and forced to take them back to his location. Roberto works in waste management and his boss Franco is dumping toxic wastes. Pasquale works as a high fashion tailor controlled by the mob. He moonlights for their Chinese competitor but it goes wrong. Marco and Ciro are young gangster wannabes. They get in over their heads.

This is a great faux-realistic take on the modern mob. It opens with a bang. I will always remember the waste disposal because of the subject matter. The two youngsters are probably the most compelling characters. There are some ups and downs. It's a disjointed watch. It's a wide-ranging take on the subject and proves to be an effective one.

The unglamourous reality of the workings of organised crime in Italy are revealed in this grim, thinly fictionalised story. There's no glamour here: just a form of business in which violence is an institutionalised part, a shadow state, in effect, only with a high rate of marginal taxation, a strong line on punishment, and no policy for the common welfare. The reality of how it feels to grow up in such an environment is plausibly conveyed. What we don't see, perhaps unsurprisingly, is too much sign of anyone showing heart; and in consequence, it's a bit hard to get into the story, and care for the mostly unsympathetic characters we meet. 'Gomorrah' isn't a great film; but it is a useful corrective against the myths of Hollywood, albeit one with a rather depressing view into one particular corner of the world.

Some publications gave Gomorra a perfect rating, while others gave more basic reviews but, in a week where The Times reviewed about 10 new releases and gave this 5 stars and everything else 1 or 2, I decided this was a film I should check out and that The House Bunny could perhaps wait for another time (specifically, when it is the last film on Earth). Gomorra opens with a beauty salon hit which I imagine is meant to introduce us to the violent and treacherous world of the Cammora crime syndicate in the locality of Naples, Italy. As an impacting opening, it does work but the "introduction" idea is sadly where the film is roundly weak and it does mean that it has the potential to confuse.

Before I get a barrage of messages pointing out to me that cousins shouldn't marry, I do not mean that I could not follow the specific threads of the film but just that the film offers nothing to inform the new viewer of the world that we are about to enter. I'm not sure the best of doing this but certainly at first I didn't totally appreciate the scale of the organisation, the structure or the setting and it took me a minute as a result to get into the stories. Unlike similar films, the separate threads never really come together in any way other than they share a grounding in location and the problem of the Cammora. Outside of a specific introduction for those coming in cold, the film does give a sort of introduction to the problem as we first follow one of the characters around the nightmarish, enclosed estate of flats which seems to perform the task of judge and prison-officer as those born into it have little opportunity to escape it and essentially have their fate sealed by virtue of their environment.

Within this feat of architecture we follow several threads including a money-man, a boy getting into the life on the lowest rung, a man starting out in the corrupt world of waste management, a black-market tailor looking to earn a bit more on the side and two young men who decide to seize power in their region from the old, fat men who sit at the top. In terms of engagement, there isn't really a huge emotional draw within the film but instead it all feels very realistic and dead - so it is not so much that you feel for the specific characters so much as you have a constant sense of hopelessness and of how small and petty it all it. This is not the Italian gangsterisms of The Godfather where there is a certain sense of class and aspiration, in Gomorra the top men are trapped in the world the same as everyone else - with more money perhaps but they are not living in mansions or controlling things from a tropical island. The delivery of the film helps this as it is well shot on location and has a hand-held feel of grit and dirt. I didn't really like the technique employed throughout where the focus was on the subject in the close foreground and everything else was blurred, even as it came into play in the scene but otherwise it was well done, with the sudden moments of violence made more impacting by not being seen due to confusion simulated in the camera or by quick editing.

Gomorra has been compared to City of God, Goodfellas and all the other crime films that get wheeled out for reviews. In most ways this is not really a fair description because Gomorra does not have the style and flair of those films, nor do all the narrative threads come together neatly in the way we have come to expect. However it is still an engagingly bleak and realistic look into the world of the Cammora that is well done even if it has flaws. It is not "enjoyable" per se due to the lack of flair, but it is a very good film nonetheless and, like City of God did with City of Men, it offers the potential for a mini-series to further explore and find stories from within this world.

A realistic film about the Neapolitan Mafia, The movie has a documentary touch which i really liked the most, the ending is perfect and real. A must-see!

Gomorra (2008) ****

Much of Gomorra takes place in and around a crumbling housing project, that in establishing shots looks as if it were a rotting labyrinth pyramid. The very structure of the film's slums serves itself as a visual metaphor for the Camorra crime institution in Naples. It's a bureaucratic shuffle, rivaling a large capitalist corporation, equally ruthless but in different senses of the term. Their products are drugs, extortion, and toxic sludge. Their version of corporate take-over involves murderously shameless acts of extreme violence.

Matteo Garrone deftly directs Gomorra, based on the novel of the same name by Roberto Saviano. It contains a labyrinth plot serving to depict a labyrinth lifestyle. One storyline focuses on a young boy, Toto, who lives in that decaying pyramid, and wants to join up with the gangsters who run it. By the end of the film, his youth will be shattered, and he'll have done things to those around him that would have seemed unthinkable before. He's the ground soldier in the gangster empire.

Don Ciro is an aging money runner, delivering rations to the families of mob prisoners. He gets increasingly caught between the war between factions within the complexes, and before long takes to wearing a bullet proof vest in fear of his own safety.

Roberto is a college graduate, given a high profile job working with Franco, who runs a scheme disposing of garbage and waste from the city by burying it in the countryside - a move that has sent the cancer rate in the countryside through the roof. Roberto must face his own conscious as he becomes more and more aware of the corruption of work.

Pasquale is a talented designer, who's put to work by his friend and boss completing a contract for dresses in less time than he and the workers should like. At great personal risk to himself, he takes an offer from a Chinese factory boss to gives lessons to his workers. The job means crossing the Comorra, so he is hidden in the trunk on the drive to the factory, with a modified hole behind the backseat so he can stick his head out to breath and chat.

The other storyline follows two Scarface-wannabes who long to be the crime bosses of all bosses. They cross the local boss by stealing drugs from dealers, causing trouble, then by stealing weapons from a mob cache, raising Cain. They are knuckle-heads, a couple of kids too stupid to see the truth behind the phony glorification of the gangster lifestyle.

That phony glorification is entirely absent here. Garrone observes his gangsters with an eye of contempt. There is no Robin Hood imagery in Gomorra. It puts on full display the ruthlessness of the gangster culture. It's a gangster as capitalist world, one where turning to killing kids or a woman is looked down upon, but not off-limits.

The film starts off with a fantastic sequence of tanning machines and surprisingly graphic murder, which would lead one to think that they were moving headlong into a Scorsese-like blood bath of macabre. You'd be wrong though. Gomorra is a very patient film, slowly unraveling its stories. It's clearly influenced by the early Italian Neo-Realists, and also has elements that reminded me of the gangster pictures of Jean-Pierre Melville. Garrone shoots in a documentary style with hand-held camera shots. It jumps between its story lines with utmost patience, which might slow down the film's pace more than many would like or are accustomed to. If you do not realize the scope of the Camorra's activity in nearly all facets of commercial and communal life in and around Naples, the connection between the stories may seem unclear. But that's one of the main services of the picture, to show us just how entrenched the mafia has remained in parts of Italy.

Although mob movies are a dime a dozen, Gamorra enters as a gangster epic with freshness. It's a very European film, and as far as gangster pictures go, with its no nonsense documentary style, and only slowly escalating violence and patience it feels like a unique addition to the genre. Gomorra is sure to split, maybe even downright annoy audiences looking for something more conventional. It defies at least most of the genre's clichés, and aims high with its quiet ambitions.

Gomorra won the Grand Prix at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and has been slotted as Italy's official entry into the 2009 Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film.

The Godfather is the standard by which all Mafia movies are compared. No Marlon Brando to carry Gomorra, and so it turns out just another slightly better then average gangster film.

The Gomorra is a clan within the traditional mob, based in southern Italy, and their reputation for brutality is legendary. It starts at a tanning salon with some bloody shootings, and escalates into a war between Mafia families, as is usually the case.

The highlight for me was Marco and Ciro, two teenage boys who decide to run their own racket, without permission from the real guys. They quote lines from Scarface, each emulating Tony Montana. This turns out to be a big mistake, with tragic consequences.

Gomorra is good, but it just does not measure up to Coppola's masterpiece of the genre, but the characters are interesting enough to recommend it

In 2003, Giancarlo De Cataldo, a judge-turned-novelist, wrote Romanzo Criminale (Crime Novel in English), a largely truthful recollection (only the names were changed) of the Magliana gang, a Roman crime organization he had sentenced to prison. Three years later, Neapolitan journalist Roberto Saviano wrote Gomorra, a first-hand, non-fiction analysis of how organized crime controls everything in his native region. The book was the result of months of direct contact with the people who keep the System (the gangsters themselves refuse to use the word Camorra, which can be considered the local version of the Sicilian Mafia) and became a huge success, the downside of which was Saviano receiving multiple death threats from the people he'd exposed and being forced to live with a permanent police escort. The reason I'm mentioning both books is they were both made into successful films (Gomorra even walked away with the Grand Prize of the Jury at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival), with one crucial difference: Romanzo Criminale is very good, but does at times, as implied by the title, feel like a novel, a fictional story. Gomorra, on the other hand, using the same raw, in-your-face style as City of God, throws the viewer into a new, scary world - the real deal.

Director Matteo Garrone, who co-wrote the screenplay with a bunch of collaborators (including Saviano himself), wisely decides to ditch the book's first-person storytelling, the only (possible) reference to the author being a young man named Roberto who helps businessman Franco (Toni Servillo) close a series of suspicious deals with various companies in the North of Italy (Venice is explicitly shown). Franco's line of work, which will sound amusing to anyone who's watched The Sopranos, is waste management, though not of the legal kind. His story is one of five that constitute the film's narrative: along with him, there's also Don Ciro (Gianfelice Imparato), who pays the family members of imprisoned crooks; Pasquale (Salvatore Cantalupo), a tailor whose life is at risk because of his contacts with the Chinese (Italians don't like competition) and whose work ends up being worn by celebrities like Scarlett Johansson (Angelina Jolie in the book); and then there are two different examples of young blood, one a loyal boy who runs errands for his drug-dealing neighbors, the other two young punks who have watched Scarface way too often (a reference to the fact that a real-life Camorra boss had his villa designed exactly like Tony Montana's) and think they can take over.

An ensemble gangster flick, then. Not quite: this is no Altman movie, which means the separate plot strands never once cross paths. This is because Gomorra doesn't set out to be a real, straightforward story, but rather offer a series of bleak, extremely real examples of how the Camorra (or the System, though neither word is ever spoken in the film) controls everything. Aside from the documentary-style cinematography and anxious cutting, the highest degree of realism comes from the cast: the only really famous actor in the film is Servillo, familiar from Paolo Sorrentino's filmography; the rest have a theatrical background or, in the case of the kids especially, were taken directly from the street (the movie was shot on location, and rumor has it the mother of a Camorra boss asked for a cameo). This shows most clearly in the way they speak: with few exceptions (Franco most notably), the characters' Neapolitan dialect is so strong the film had to be subtitled in most parts of Italy. Garrone and Saviano's message is clear: this isn't your usual genre flick, it's something else - something palpable, something real, something terrifying.

Gomorra's top achievement is that it doesn't play to the stereotype of Italy being nothing but the home of gangsters. On the contrary, it pinpoints a sad fact, its intent being to denounce and make aware, never to glorify. Sure, it opens with a shootout that could remind of Goodfellas (still one of the best first-hand crime tales) or The Sopranos, but even those masterpieces are too smooth and polished next to the gritty, unsettling universe that emerges from this film. It's dirty, brutal, scary. And it simply has to be seen.

The actors did a great job with their characters, and rightly so as most are locals of the area. The usage of non-professional actors/ local talent really helped in capturing the authenticity of the story. Also, the location-shooting did a great job in capturing the core of the Mafia, while also establishing its widespread influences. The spaces we see are limited, but many. What I mean by this is that because of the different story-lines, we see many different spaces, but what we see of these spaces is limited. They do not travel much in their own settings (except for Franco and Roberto who travel across the country).

The first scene of the film establishes the violence of the subject and the aggressiveness of the Mafia. The film does show quite a bit of explicit content. This helps to deny the glorification that being part of the Mafia is usually depicted as bringing. Unlike how conspicuous consumption and success is shown in Scarface (which is also referenced in this movie), Matteo Garrone makes an effort not to show that side of glorification. The Mafia members here are ruthless, violent and seemingly do not have morals. It takes little to agitate them and loyalty plays a big part in maintaining one's safety. This again shows the reality of the film and the lives of the people in Naples.

The endings of the different story-lines complement each other in sending the message that you are either with or against the Camorra. Although in the case of Roberto, his future is left ambiguous which is a little confusing.

Overall a great portrayal of the Camorra system in Naples, with well established story-lines and great acting. What makes this film terrifying is the fact that this is based from reality and that the people living there have no choice but to go along or face the consequences (usually death).

Read more movie reviews at: championangels.wordpress.com

Just back from seeing this. Still a bit shell-shocked. First impressions that it's up there with the very best. The last scene in particular was worthy of Bunuel at his most vengeful. Yes, it's in that league. Very tough indeed. Not a trace of sentiment. Entirely plausible performances. Taut and highly original direction, documentary style. Some of the set locations are just jaw dropping - be they natural or man-made. Some brilliant touches - shots panning back to reveal an entirely different context, the camera lingering on facial expressions of those left behind by the action, or on fear, or shock. A devastating commentary on life amongst the poor in modern Italy, this is as far removed from even the best Hollywood gangster movies as it is possible to imagine. The only American comparison might be with Scorsese's "Mean Streets" - but there you are invited to empathise with characters (especially the one played by Harvey Keitel) and it is still possible to romanticise De Niro's depiction of Johnny Boy. There are no such avenues offered here. The traditional gangster movie denouement is contemptuously thrown away in the first five minutes. Not for the fainthearted but if you appreciated Bunuel's "Los Olividados" or "Pixote" or "Salaam Bombay" then this is for you.

The only reason I give this movie 7 out of 10 is that it can be hard to follow. It's a little too long but it is a very realistic view of the modern crime families in Naples. The five separate plots, at times, seem to be disjointed but it pays to actively watch the film.

It is not a movie that spoon feeds you with the plot. Instead, this is a movie that demands active watching with respect to details. Also, its worth while to watch it twice to appreciate the details that you may have a missed the first time around.

The depiction of the crime families in Naples seems to be true to life, with a good build up of the multiple characters. American audiences may have trouble with it due to its length and complexity.

Based on Roberto Saviano's best seller ( over 1.000.000 copies sold in Italy ), this movie is an inside look at Camorra's underworld in Naples, depicted as a sort of modern Dante's Inferno. Children and young guys are involved in a merciless, cruel struggle for life and blood money which has caused over 3.600 dead so far which is a bigger slaughter than the others committed by different criminal organizations in Italy and elsewhere. Five stories from Saviano's book have been chosen and told through a few professional actors and a lot of real people that never stood in front of a camera before. A heavy, gray sky hangs over these sleazy landscapes as if the beauty of one of the Italian lands of the sun had fled and the moral darkness had taken its place. Go watch this unconventional masterpiece as soon as it's released somewhere in your area.

I got a chance to see Gomorrah for free, and after reading Empire's 4 star review, I couldn't possibly turn down the chance. Despite the torrential downpour of rain that I had to battle through to get to the cinema, it was definitely worth it. Sitting in a dark room with legs soaked to the core (and becoming increasingly colder by the minute) is not the most pleasant of experiences, but as soon as the film starts it draws you in with it's most stylish and possibly most violent moment. From there on the pace slows down and the film becomes more of an interlinked multi-character study. Taking the usual route in representing crime stemming from poverty is starting to get old now, but thankfully it does not dwell on this too much (we've seen this far too many times in the likes of City of God or Sweet Sixteen) but it is important to have this themes as a backdrop, adding realism to the motivation of the characters. One shot that impresses is an introduction to Toto's home; a dilapidated block of flats that is frequently framed to resemble prison cells, not only highlighting how bad the quality of life in the area is, but also suggesting that the inhabitants are 'imprissioned' by the crime, and end up partaking in it as a means to get out. The violence of the film is handled excellently, with sparse but strong moments of incredibly realistic killings that sneak up on the audience as much is it does the victims. The downfall of the film, however, is lack of focus. As with several films that use a structure made up of interlinked plots, cutting back and forth between different story lines prevents the audience from being able to identify with the characters, and the several plot strands arn't really strong enough to hold your interest in each one. This isn't a disaster though, because the film is still fantastic in moments and the acting and cinematography are often superb, it's just a bit too vague on the whole to really capture your attention and make you care about the story.

yes agree with all of the above comments. Not much to add except the film clearly references several earlier Italian masterpieces. Rocco and His Brothers for one, Paisa for another. I love the way this film strips away the glamour which characterizes Hollywood gangster films to reveal the degraded, degenerate and putrid reality of the criminal world. The people most affected by crime are those at the bottom living on sink estates like the one depicted, with an ineffectual police content to contain the situation in the ghettos. There's a really telling scene where a young graduate, drawn in to a criminal conspiracy of illegal disposal of toxic waste, decides hes had enough. His boss tells him to dump a box of peaches grown on toxic land, 'can t you smell them' ... the way the fruit contrasts with the shiny, flashy big SUV this guy drives. Our knowledge as the audience of what hes been up to, signing off a container of toxic waste to the African captain of a container ship as 'humanitarian aid...' This sort of symbolism elevates the film to the level of the great Italian masterpieces of cinema. Peaches, fruit, food is such a staple of Italian culture. Perfect looking peaches which are grown on toxic land become a metaphor for Italy itself. The measured pace certainly wont be for everyone, five people walked out the multiplex where I watched it. This is the thinking persons gangster movie. You need to work at it. The violence is shocking for its matter of factness whats most disturbing is how human life and dignity have become utterly ... I dunno I m searching for words here. Trivial? Trivial isn't the right word. Its more complete and utter degradation. Human life here has lost all dignity. When someones killed its in almost documentary fashion. Conventions of the gangster genre are discarded instead its shocking in its suddenness and sheer banality. Two obese, sweaty men in bermuda shorts despatch a pair of coked up boys whove been making a nuisance of themselves. Human life here has no value and for me this masterpiece of cinema articulates my belief we are at the beginning of the end of Western civilisation. Appropriate coming from the country which gave us Michelangelo, Caravaggio, and Silvio Berlusconi...

This is one great movie by director Matteo Garrone. It's a living example of contemporary neorealist cinema. Based on Roberto Saviano's homonymous bestseller, the movie explores the world of one of the most atrocious criminal organizations in the world, the Camorra. Using unsophisticated realist cinematography, editing and aesthetics, and through the choice of actors, most of whom are simply local residents of the neighborhood, the movie does throw you mercilessly in this inferno for over two hours, where you can smell the blood, feel the misery of Naples's slums and live that vicious circle of violence, despair and injustice. A masterpiece and must-see!

I see a lot of movies and it's a rare one that has me looking at the ceiling, looking at the audience, looking at the walls of the theater (looking at my watch).... I couldn't find my way into this film. Billed as some "true" look at the mafia, it has every element that "The Soprano's" did except this looks like it was edited with a hatchet.

With about five or six plot lines, it takes skill to interweave the elements and not just think "Okay, now we'll cut away to another story." I was flummoxed (yes, flummoxed) at how awkward and clumsy this was. Clearly a lot of effort went into the production and the cast certainly "looks" the part, but I didn't know why anyone was warring with each other or what was at stake.

The most coherent (and surreal) segment involves an haute couture enterprise, but even that had me asking, "Now, why would anyone care if so-and-so was showing so-and-so how to cut a bodice?"

And just what did the woman with the monkey have to do with...anything? It takes effort to mess up a movie that has a woman with a monkey.

Tedious stuff, I thought.

No "Goodfellas" romanticized mob story is to be found here. Therefore this depressing portrait is definitely NOT suited for the masses, who might mistakingly expect to see such a romanticized version of the mob. A kick in the gut is the best one can expect from this hardhitting story about dumping chemical waste, which is a multi million dollar industry in parts of Italy, which are under control by the mob (called gomorra).

The acting is terrific, by ALL (unknown) Italian actors concerned. There are NO leading characters in this story, because it is meant to be a general documentary styled portrait of an Italian "war zone" neighbourhood, run by the mob. Expect a documentary, not a thrilling mob movie, that's the best attitude to enter this film. Because what distinguishes this mob epic from all the others, is the painfully accurate true to life depiction of the struggle of the poor people in Italy, who are forced to endure the Italian mob's criminal ways of doing business.

"Gomorra" is without doubt the most bleak and depressing true to life depiction of the Italian mob, I have ever witnessed. Still highly recommended to every arthouse movie lover. It could even be used for educational purposes, because it shows the criminal ways of the mob WITHOUT the usual hollywood glorification of violence.

A Cannes prize winner, the film weaves a complex look at the activities of the Camorra, a crime syndicate that had the book author Roberto Saviano put under police protective custody for his expose on their activities, which range from drugs to dealing in toxic wastes, and their extensive money laundering activities which the closing credits stated their involvement in financing the new World Trade Centre in New York.

It's a gritty, unflinching look at the crime activities a modern day Italian crime family undertakes day to day, and the community that it both supports, and taps from. From the get go we're thrust into an environment where the gun is the leveller in settling disputes, and disputes which we do not have much detail of, only that scores of hit men get engaged to permanently dispatch enemies. The introductory scene in the artificial tanning room will make you sit up for its mindless violence.

Presented in an episodic form with the focus on a myriad of one-function characters, such as a boy making his rounds to delivery groceries to family members of those incarcerated. But amongst the characters, the ones to stand out, in my opinion, happen to be from the point of view of two teenagers (who adorn the posters), for that sheer attitude that they consider themselves a cut above the world, like frogs in the well thinking that the world is not limitless, and being youths, think they have plenty of opportunity ahead of time, and hence with a lot of time to waste. They mock at the crime lords, not knowing what's in it for them, with false bravado fueled only by the cache of arms which they stumble upon.

It's somewhat hilarious as well, given that they are fans of Scarface, and can recite lines and mimic Al Pacino's mannerisms from that movie, thinking that it is all there is to it should they want to survive in the underworld, coupled with the usual wounded pride and ego in wanting to challenge the established crime family. They do seem extremely clueless of the kind of trouble they're getting themselves into, especially when trouble comes looking for them at a time when they're most vulnerable. Caught with their pants down literally, and while comical, it just goes to show that patience is all that it takes in order to strike effectively.

Gamorrah is a very bleak film, devoid of much hope, and there are some scenes especially toward the end which could be quite disturbing and unsettling. But I guess violence begets more violence, and it's difficult to try and break out of the circle when you're essentially entrenched into the system.

When most people think of the mafia they think of American mobsters or Sicilians; this film tells of a group even more dangerous... The Camorra on Naples. Rather than having a conventional narrative we get glimpses into the lives of various people connected to crime in the city. Marco and Ciro; a pair of wannabe gangsters who operate independently and think they've hit the big time when they find a Camorra weapons stash; Don Ciro, a timid middleman who delivers payments to the families of gaoled gang members; Pasquale, a tailor who works at a factory controlled by the mob and Totò a thirteen year old grocery delivery boy who gradually gets caught up in the crime, amongst others. We see who the Camorra has its tentacles everywhere; drugs, weapons, fake designer goods and illegal disposal of toxic waste. The crime is profitable and the various subgroups are more than willing to kill to keep control of what they have already or to take what they want from others.

This film is far from being a feel good story; it never glamorises the criminal lifestyle but instead shows how it ruins the lives of those it touches like a cancer eating away at the society. Nobody here is seen living the high life. The way it is filmed with hand held cameras on real locations give the film an almost documentary feel; as though we are there with real gangsters not seeing people act. The actors all do a good job at making their various characters seem real. There are plenty of shocking moments even when one has been primed to expect something bad to happen. Perhaps the biggest shock is that all of this is happening in a modern European country not somewhere less developed. Overall I'd definitely recommend this to people interested in the subject; just don't expect any laughs or thrills... the violence is sudden and brutal not exciting.

These comments are based on watching the film in Italian with English subtitles.

Talk about flimsy story lines. We watched for 2 hrs and asked ourselves, "What is going on?". The multiple plots were a trainwreck trying to keep up with.

Yea, it shows the gritty side of Italy. Yea, it features some criminals. But it seemed to me that it was just filming the characters delivering food, making dresses (one is a dressmaker), and delivering money.

There was a (boring) subplot about illegal dumping of waste. The one story that was slightly interesting was the two wannabe gangsters.

Unless you like movies just for the fact that it is set in Italy, avoid this nonsensical bore fest.

I read in previous comments on this page all my thoughts and feelings about Gomorra, it's very difficult to add more... Anyway I'd like to point out something about: this work of Art is halfway between neorealism and epic style, the extraordinary use of lessons taken by best cinema makers in the world, the long sequences recalled me Hitchkock, the "dollies" sequences recalled me Sergio Leone, the choice in acting recalled me Ken Loach, the sapience in using noises and music Stanley Kubrick, and definitely the light looks chosen by Rotunno and Visconti; everything makes a no doubt new original artist named "Matteo Garrone"! Even his springing was with the superb "L'Imbalsamatore". I can be not so sure the movie is telling just a "neapolitan" story, it tells the Italy's story, where the official life is to a level and the real life to another one. Coppola, De Palma, Scorsese wrote a first part, Garrone finished it. As an Italian I feel deeply ashamed for our industrial class so "glamoured" officially (the fashion as the first...) and in reality so involved with criminality. Gomorra is not a "denounce" movie, but a "constatation" movie.