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Photo courtesy IFC Films.
It's a reasonable assumption that a film chronicling the inner workings of an actual mob syndicate would be interesting, engaging even. You would assume, as you saunter in with your too-large Coke and your caution-orange butter popcorn that, "hey, some of this is probably going to end up on the floor, because I'm going to get startled or have to turn myself away quickly from the bloodshed and gunplay".
"Hey," you'll say, "I'm not going to get the full value of this popcorn and soda. But this is the path I chose when I decided to invest my time and money in a film that is guaranteed to leave me enraptured with fear and a neurotic readiness for any type of street crime".
Again, a reasonable assumption. What is unreasonable, then, is the movie Gomorrah. It is simply unreasonable to have finished your popcorn and soda inside the movie; not because some fell to the floor, but because you were so bored you gorged yourself. It is unreasonable to realize that a staged reading of the source material would take less time than the two-plus-hour film version. But is it unreasonable for you see this film? Surprisingly, it may not be.
Gomorrah is the true-to-life story of the Camorra crime family, an actual mobster outfit operating out of Naples. They run rackets, run guns and drugs, they even run toxic waste from northern industrial ports into the cavernous gorges on the outskirts of their own lands. All of the essential elements, and some of the beefier details, are left to boil down into five disparate narratives: the young would-be foot soldier, the older teens with delusions of grandeur and a real chance of being murdered, the underpaid tailor who 'defects' to make some quick money off of the growing Chinese garment industry, the soft-spoken money runner who doles out petty pensions to former members, and the savvy business man literally responsible for burying all that is toxic. The stories all loosely surround the same grey and decrepit slum, particularly the aging steel and cement Italian projects that feed so forcefully into the felony food chain.
Gomorrah, for all of its story-telling downfalls, is actually shot quite beautifully. Filmed in a high-quality documentary style, it is truly unfortunate that the script was not able to move fast enough to get out of the cinematographer's way. The constantly overcast skies and late-afternoon sunlight give the film all the quiet desperation of a silently complicit character in the bloodshed. Even scenes in Venice and along the beach look dreary, worn, and mostly broken, with the gold chains, oily weaponry, and shining mob cars as the only glittering glimmer of the money and hope that underpins the entire organization.
Perhaps this is nothing more than the classic example of the film not living up to its ultimate hype, considering the book Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano is widely considered one of the top crime exposes ever written, especially where it concerns the Italian mafia. In fact, the book was so popular (with the public, the government, and even the Camorra crime family themselves) that Saviano has lived under government-issued 'round-the-clock surveillance since it's publication in 2006. It is sad, then, that the film simply cannot deliver. Perhaps the inner workings of the crime system fail to be adequately and interestingly portrayed, perhaps it is the American sentiment to wish for more drama and a quicker step. Whatever the case, Gomorrah simply fails to capture the intensity of its written counterpart, and were it not for the stylistic choices of the film, there would be little substance.
Gomorrah opens February 13th in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal Theatre, in Pasadena at Laemmle's Playhouse, and in Encino at Laemmle's Town Center.
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Say it ain't so, Farley! I really wanted to see that.
I'm sorry Molly. I really wanted to believe. And it does LOOK good, but everything else just fell apart for me.
have to agree with you here. i suppose the director tired to keep it real to the point that you realize that even the daily life of a real gangster is pretty boring.
As old W was want to say: I strongly disagree. Your glib review seems to have entirely missed the point (and if movie snack compatibility is to be such a large part of the experience, maybe you were in the wrong theater altogether). Gomorrah is'n really the 'true to tlife story of a crime family'. I have nothing against the Godfather (nor Little Caesar, Public Enemy, Goodfellas , or either Scarface) and as The Sopranos so brilliantly showed the genre is still vital and capable of expressing some of the best fiction in film. Its also evolving, experimenting and branching in ever more nuanced story telling directions and Gomorrrah's greatest sin according to its critics is that it breaks with dramatic conventions and, in the age of mockumentaries, docudramas and mockudrama, dares (gasp) to venture into a post-neorealist narrative style rooted in Rossellini and De Sica.
Its an important film that deals (at the real peril of its authors I might add) with a staggeringly real contemporary phenomenon, eschewing the dramatic conventions of character arc and neat catharsis we're force-fed at the multiplex in favor of an unflynchingly adult narrative. If this is cinema's sin, well there's always Mall Cop...and enjoy the popcorn tub.
I also disagree with the review of this movie. I thought it was very entertaining, although a notch below a couple of other smaller films to come out in the recent past ( Let The Right One In, A Christmas Tale ).
I hope the negative review didn't come from someone having a sore jaw after reading the subtitles?
There are definitely elements of the film that I enjoyed (namely the look of it all) but for the most part I found the whole thing to be too slow. That's not to say that I need blood and guts and big finales with coke and machine guns, but I found (personally) little reason to be stuck to my seat, other than the gum and whoknowswhatelse that were already there.
And I may not be the only one who didn't like it, although I certainly am in the minority.
P.S. PAUL BLART MALL COP 4 LIFE!!!1!!1114q2R42422