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GOMORRAH Send This Review to a Friend
The Italian import “Gomorrah,” which was showcased at the 2008 New York Film Festival, is a thoroughly unsentimental, violent depiction of organized crime that is rooted in the Naples area under control of the empire known as the Camorra. Director Matteo Garrone, also one of six screenwriters collaborating on the adaptation of a book by Robert Saviano, fuses various stories into a depressing whole. The film is vivid and in some ways reminiscent of Italian neo-realism, but it allows for very little emotionalism.
In essence, Garrone is telling us this is how it is. People live and die in a cauldron of crime ruled ruthlessly by vicious bosses. The situation is illustrated by two young punks (Marco Macor and Ciro Petrone) who think they can score on their own. They are on the one hand evil guys, but they are also hapless and inept, and we know that they will just become victims of their own criminal intentions in the context of mobsters who will look at them as vermin to be eliminated.
Such is the tone of “Gomorrah,” with a large, realistic-looking cast headed by Toni Servillo as a businessman. His corporate activities involve fouling the environment with dumping of toxic substances. Thus the film shows criminality reaching into upper levels. Ordinary civilians are caught in the cross-fire of neighborhood mob control, and those who work for the gangsters in routine tasks are in peril of being victimized themselves.
While “Gomorrah” is consistently involving, there is little to make one care in an emotional way. It is a cold-blooded chronicle that, although fictional, plays like a nasty documentary. An IFC Films release.
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