My Review: Gomorra (8/10)

¨Want to give up? Are we meat for the slaughter house? ¨

Gomorra is a very clever play on words referring to the Italian organized crime gang known as the Comorra from Naples, Italy, and also referencing to the evil cities of Sodom and Gomorrah from the Bible. Director Matteo Garrone takes a neorealist approach very different from the Hollywood gangster films that have been highly romanticized and delivers a raw and realistic film about the modern day crime organization that is responsible for having killed over 400,000 people in the last 30 years. Garrone adapted the screenplay from Roberto Saviano`s book of the same name (the credit has to be given to him for the clever title). Saviano went undercover for several years inside the Comorra and wrote the book based on facts even using real names and locations. Garrone decided to adapt five separate stories from the several ones that are told in the book and intertwine them in his film jumping from one story to the next throughout the 135 minutes the movie lasts. At the beginning the plot seems very confusing because we don`t have a sense of what is going on and we are just put right in the middle of separate stories, but after the first 40 minutes we begin to get a feeling of what is happening and each story begins to have one thing in common: the Comorra. These stories give us a major picture of the different levels that the crime organization operates in. If you want to know how real the film is then just ask Saviano who has to live under 24 hour protection because he received several life threatening messages from the Comorra, or ask director Garrone who had to constantly keep on changing filming locations in fear of the violent organization`s reprimands.

The movie opens with a violent introduction in which a group of men are killed inside a tanning salon. The violence isn`t stylized it is simply depicted in a raw and realistic fashion letting us know that this is the type of film we are going to get. Gomorra then begins telling five separate overlapping stories that take place in Naples. The first one has to do with a young boy named Toto (Salvatore Abruzzese) who helps out his mother as a delivery boy. He lives in a poor neighborhood and he looks up to some of the young guys who are part of a gang, and wants to join them. The second story deals with a businessman named Franco (Toni Servillo) who is closing several deals with his illegal waste management company. He offers a young graduate named Roberto (Carmine Paternoster) a job as his assistant who feels conflicted with the employment. Another story has to do with a tailor named Pasquale (Salvatore Cantalupo) who has been working since he was a child and now is one of the best tailors although he continues to be exploited by his boss. Then there is Don Ciro (Gianfelice Imparato) who`s job is to pay some family members of Comorra prisoners who`s names are given to him on a list although the money never seems to be enough. The fifth story is perhaps the most entertaining one and deals with two young kids, Marco (Marco Macor) and Ciro (Ciro Petrone), who dream of becoming the next Tony Montana from Scarface and constantly make references to that movie.

Gomorra will change your perspective on the mafia depicting it as what it truly is, unlike what many Hollywood movies have made it out to look like. It really is a powerful film that will open your eyes and terrify you for the simplistic violence. These characters seem to have no remorse for what they do and the only two characters that can be considered as the good guys are perhaps Pasquale and Roberto. The movie does begin kind of slow and the unrelated stories overlapping each other can confuse you at first; this is not a movie for the lazy viewer; it is one that will make you think and pay attention to what is going on, but if you can manage to get past those first 40 minutes it begins to really pick up and make sense. Gomorra won the Grand Prize of the Festival in Cannes in 2008 as well as the European Award for best film. It comes as no surprise that it wasn`t considered for the Oscars as best foreign picture because this film is way too dark for the Academy`s taste (or perhaps they have members of the Comorra on the inside, they are everywhere, just kidding).

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