Movie Review: Gomorrah

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.