poe426 GOMORRAH comes about as close to being a documentary about The American Way as anything else. Take it from someone who sees exactly these kinds of crimes on a daily basis: Crime is the Universal Language- especially when it comes to "illegal narcotics." (In the past five days, we've had four murders here in Crack Town; a man was shot down in cold blood a few years ago less than a hundred feet from where I live; the body of a young woman suspected of preparing to testify against local meth dealers was found rotting in her apartment a few blocks away; the housing project where I used to live, notorious for its open-air drug dealing, was finally shut down when one of the dealers shot the father of two kids when he asked them not to deal drugs in front of his apartment (the man was shot in the head, at point blank range, and I just happened to drive by as a school bus full of underage eye-witnesses poured out into the street to look at the still-bleeding victim); when "authorities" made an arrest, the scores of large dumpsters in that complex were set alight and allowed to melt to the ground (I saw light flickering outside my back door and looked out to see what was going on: I saw flames that reached all the way up past the telephone lines- right next to my car, which just happened to be the only car in any of the parking lots; moving my car required ducking under flames that extended out over the hood and backing it across the parking lot; I was later told by firefighters that MINE had been the only 9-1-1 call made that night), etc. (I could go on for quite some time, but you get the idea. Oddly enough, Crack Town actually made the cover of a national magazine just recently; it was picked as the most "beautiful" place to live or somesuch nonsense.) While I have no desire whatsoever to see "all illegal drugs made legal," I think that writers like Johann Hari (CHASING THE SCREAM) make good arguments for Decriminalization. English comedian Russell Brand has made EXACTLY the same argument(s), pointing out that it's often the shortcomings of Society itself that results in drug addiction. (I can honestly say that, with only two exceptions, I've never met anyone in my life who WASN'T a User.) GOMORRAH never came close to shocking me the way I think it was meant to shock the viewer, but that's not a knock against the film nor the filmmaker(s): it's just a sad comment on Our Times.

billcr12 The Godfather is the standard by which all Mafia movies are compared. No Marlon Brando to carry Gomorra, and so it turns out just another slightly better then average gangster film.The Gomorra is a clan within the traditional mob, based in southern Italy, and their reputation for brutality is legendary. It starts at a tanning salon with some bloody shootings, and escalates into a war between Mafia families, as is usually the case. The highlight for me was Marco and Ciro, two teenage boys who decide to run their own racket, without permission from the real guys. They quote lines from Scarface, each emulating Tony Montana. This turns out to be a big mistake, with tragic consequences. Gomorra is good, but it just does not measure up to Coppola's masterpiece of the genre, but the characters are interesting enough to recommend it

Cosmoeticadotcom here is a difference between realistic films, such as those made by John Cassavetes, and cinema verité, or films that try to approximate realism. Realistic films know they are fiction, but nonetheless mimic reality for the sake of art, whereas cinema verité attempts to fool viewers into thinking it is real. Matteo Garrone's 2008, 137 minute long gangster film, Gomorrah (Gomorra), is the latter sort of film, and in its attempt at fooling the viewer lays bare its artifice, as well as its essential failure, insofar as making any claims on greatness. This is not to say it is a bad film, just not a great one. It is a good film, with interesting moments, but far too often the film's multiple characters and stories are wanly sketched and inspire no care, much less recognition, and the action unfolds in a wholly anomic manner. In fact, little of it actually unfolds, and this lack of action; real action, inner action- not bang bang action- makes the film, at its worst, quite boring. Some critics have attempted to call the film Neo-Neo-Realism, but this isn't apt. Nor are the claims that this is a Mafia film. It's not. In fact, it's a Camorra film, and the Italian Camorra (the play on words, with the rhyming Gomorrah, is as forced as it is heavyhanded), based in Naples, is different from the Sicilian-based Mafia, in that, whereas the Mob, and most other organized criminal groups operate in the hierarchical vertical structure of a Family, the Camorra operates in a more horizontal, cell like structure. The Camorra, therefore, has more in common with terrorist groups, such as Al Quaida, in that it centers less power with individuals. But, none of this trivia matters to the film- although many bad critics love to trumpet the factoids they gleaned from press releases or a good Google search as if that made up for the film's lack.

Pertti Jaska In Neapolitan Camorra, the semi-fictional events of Matteo Garrone on location around Naples with incredible precision dressed in frightening images. And the film has become the uncompromising declaration of war against the Camorra, the international drug trade, toxic waste, sweatshop the production of designer fashion and monopoly on the cement trade has. On five separate fates GOMORRHA describes the suggestive power of the Camorra, the operations by which the clans claiming their power and the manipulation that they keep their dirty business in motion a cruel world that is nevertheless deeply rooted in reality. Why GOMORRHA big Mafia films like "Scarface" (Brian DE Palma), "Hands Over the City" (Francesco Rosi) or "The Godfather" (Francis Ford Coppola) perpetuates - and frighteningly current. In Italy, GOMORRHA immediately put to the top of the box office and drew within the first two weeks of spectacular 1.5 million visitors in the movie theaters. That's what I read on the back of the DVD.GOMORRHA won the ARRI Zeiss Award at the Munich Film Festival and received at the Cannes Film Festival Grand Jury Prize. No surprise there... it deserved it.The film is not "the godfather", not about the heads of the Mafia, but the everyday life on the street below. Sometimes one feels like being in the slums where Mafia really makes their businesses. You look to have what the normality of violence surrounding the Mafia seems. The killer does not come with a pinstripe suit, sunglasses and a violin case, therefore, but in flip flops and shorts, the killings are far from action movies and theatricality. According guy has the Camorra in Europe more people on his conscience than any other criminal or terrorist organization in the last thirty years - a dead man every 3 days. The Comprehensible that the Camorra, the book and the movie have been made.The press release for the film reads more about the Mafia, but it is not your old mafia, but the new. And the comparison fits, Gomorrah can be described as "educational film about the NEW Mafia". Good film!