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Gomorra review
:. Director: Matteo Garrone
:. Starring: Salvatore Abruzzese, Simone Sacchettino
:. Running Time: 2:17
:. Year: 2008
:. Country: Italy
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I was just watching The Godfather last night, which is a ritual I go through every other year, and it struck me that comparing Gomorra to this film is like comparing Rio Bravo to For a Fistful of Dollars. Both films co-exist within the same subgenre but have nothing in common besides portraying organized crime. Gomorra has been labeled as the anti-Godfather, which is probably a punch line owed to an unimaginative journalist rushing out from a Cannes screening, and nothing could be further from the truth. Rather, Gomorra can be seen as a complementary work to the Sopranos, examining the lives of Tony Soprano's cousins across the Atlantic.
Both the series and this film offer a similar vision of a modern underworld, filled with unglamorized figures that aspire to be princes but are stuck in ordinary middle-class reality. They are overweight, wear sweat pants, live in small apartments, enjoy the company of strippers and are obsessed with tanning. They also kill abruptly, without an operatic sense that makes violence appealing in so many gangster movies.
What differentiates Gomorra from other works however in the Mobster sub-genre is that it emphasizes the involvement of kids in the Mafia. Whether it's to run errands, take care of minor duties, perpetuate petty crimes or be used as killers, kids are the backbone of an organization in need of foot soldiers. Born in a society ruled by crime, they seem predestined to join the ranks of the mafia, as in their eyes, it is a normal — and the only — option they have to make a living. They also have the same fascination for glamourous gangster figures such as Scarface as their counterparts in ghettos around the world. Taken out of the Mafia subgenre and placed in the crime genre, Gomorra loses this thematic uniqueness, as this depiction of criminal kids has already been treated several times in the last few years, most notably in City of God, Tsotsi or Boyz in the Hood.
The film also provides the opportunity to have a behind-the-scene look at the way the Gomorra function, as the movie is based on a journalistic investigation being shot in the tradition of cinema-verité vying for a documentary vibe. What you gain in realism, you lose in character development; the film offers too many characters whose portraits are hardly brushed and too many storylines, which results in a confusing and overlong experience. What this picture successfully retains throughout is the populist atmosphere inherent to Italian films from the 60's. Matteo Garrone's film doesn't judge the people being entangled with the mafia. His camera fully embraces them, making them the passive actors of an environment they can't escape.
In a year where cinematic wonders were scarce, the importance of Gomorra was somewhat inflated. This is certainly not a picture that will revolutionize the genre as you might read here and there; rather this is a vibrant testimonial that will emphasize the idea that despite changes in settings, the rules of the criminal game remain the same, wherever you are in the world.
Fred Thom
 Movie Reviews: Italian Films
Movie Reviews: from 1998 to 2011
New Film Reviews since 2012
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