Gomorra

Plot synopsis:
The film opens with the murder of gangsters relaxing in a tanning salon. This shooting occurs between clans of the Di Lauro Camorra syndicate which rule Scampia-Secondigliano, and triggers the so-called Faida di Scampia (Scampia feud) which is the backdrop of the entire movie. The Faida erupts between members of the Di Lauro syndicate and the so-called scissionisti (separatists), who are led by Raffaele Amato, brother of two of the killed men in the opening scene.
The film intertwines five separate stories of people whose lives are touched by organized crime.
Don Ciro
Don Ciro (Gianfelice Imparato) is a timid middleman who distributes money to the families of imprisoned Di Lauro clan members. After the feud develops within the clan, he is ambushed by a pair of angry scissionisti during a delivery. Fearing for his life, he later offers to defect to their side. They refuse his offer, and tell Ciro that he has to "pay" for his life by selling some of his former associates. He leads them to the location where he is given the money for distribution. The pair raid the place, killing everyone but Ciro, and take the money. Ciro quietly walks off to an uncertain future.
Totò
Totò (Salvatore Abruzzese) is a 13-year-old grocery delivery boy who witnesses some drug dealers abandon a bag of drugs and a gun while evading the police at Sette palazzi in Scampia. He returns the items to the gang, who take him in. His initiation in an underground cavern consists of him being shot while wearing a bulletproof vest as a test of courage. As the feud intensifies, families in the neighborhood whose loyalties are suspect are ordered to move out or suffer violence; Totò's fellow gang members receive similar threats. Later, while hanging out with his gang in the streets of Scampia, one of his gang is killed in a drive-by. The gang members decide to stand their ground and exact violent retribution by selecting a woman, Maria (Maria Nazionale), as their next victim, as her son has joined a clan of Secondigliano scissionisti. Totò, who has delivered groceries to Maria, is forced to lure her out of her apartment, where his comrades execute her.
Roberto
Roberto (Carmine Paternoster) is a graduate who works in waste management. His boss, Franco (Toni Servillo) provides a low-cost toxic waste disposal service that allows northern industrialists to dispose of materials like chromium and asbestos in the countryside of southern Italy. Franco and Roberto orchestrate the illegal disposal of the waste at abandoned quarries and other environmentally-sensitive sites. During one such operation, a drum of toxic chemicals is accidentally spilled on a driver. Franco refuses to call an ambulance, and hires children to drive the trucks when the workers refuse to continue their work. Later, Franco and Roberto meet a family of farmers who, desperate to extinguish their debts, decide to allow the burial of chemical substances in their countryside. An elderly farmer gifts Roberto a basket of peaches, but Franco later tells him to throw them away because they are contaminated. Roberto then decides to quit his job and tells Franco he cannot bring himself to poison the earth, to which Franco says that he shouldn't think he is the better man, because thanks to the actions of people like them Italy was able to enter the European Union, solving problems others had caused. Roberto walks alone on a desolate countryside road.
Pasquale
Pasquale (Salvatore Cantalupo) is an haute couture tailor who works for Iavarone (Gigio Morra), a garment factory owner with ties to the Camorra. Pasquale takes a night-job training Chinese garment workers. As they are competing with Camorra-controlled firms, the Chinese drive him to and from work in the trunk of their car. His secret work is discovered nonetheless, and his Chinese associates are killed in a drive-by. He survives the attack, but resigns his job. Later, working as a truck driver, he is in a transport café where he spots Scarlett Johansson on TV wearing one of his dresses. He smiles wryly as he drives away.
Marco and Ciro aka Sweet Pea
Marco (Marco Macor) and Ciro (Ciro Petrone) are two young wannabe-gangsters who try to operate their own small racket independently of the local clan. Impressed by mafia portrayals from Hollywood movies, they quote lines and spontaneously reenact scenes from Scarface in Walter Schiavone's villa while dropping references to Tony Montana, Miami, and Colombians. Their first score is robbing African immigrants during a drug purchase at the famous Hotel Boomerang, Castel Volturno. The word of the incident gets to the local mob chieftain Giovanni (Giovanni Venosa), who summons them and warns them under threat of violence not to repeat such behavior in the future. Ignoring him completely, they spy Camorra gangsters hiding a stash of weapons. They steal the weapons and amuse themselves by firing off rounds by the banks of a Regi Lagni canal estuary in the marshland. Once they run out of money, they use their guns to rob a video arcade, and spend their stolen funds at a strip club. The gangsters, angered, find them and threaten to kill them if they don't return the weapons within a day. The pair prove stubborn. Zio Vittorio (Vittorio Russo), one of the local gangsters approaches them in a bar with an offer to come work for him. He offers them €10,000 if they return the weapons and murder Peppe O'Cavallaro, in fact uncle Bernardino (Bernardino Terracciano). They accept the contract, which turns out to be a trap, as they are ambushed and killed by Giovanni, Bernardino, Vittorio and others at the location of their supposed target, an abandoned beach resort next to Regi Lagni canal estuary. The last scene shows their dead bodies being carried away by a front end loader.

Tags: violence, cruelty, murder

Review:
It's a gangster as capitalist world, one where turning to killing kids or a woman is looked down upon, but not off-limits.The film starts off with a fantastic sequence of tanning machines and surprisingly graphic murder, which would lead one to think that they were moving headlong into a Scorsese-like blood bath of macabre.
It's a very European film, and as far as gangster pictures go, with its no nonsense documentary style, and only slowly escalating violence and patience it feels like a unique addition to the genre.
The book was the result of months of direct contact with the people who keep the System (the gangsters themselves refuse to use the word Camorra, which can be considered the local version of the Sicilian Mafia) and became a huge success, the downside of which was Saviano receiving multiple death threats from the people he'd exposed and being forced to live with a permanent police escort.
The reason I'm mentioning both books is they were both made into successful films (Gomorra even walked away with the Grand Prize of the Jury at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival), with one crucial difference: Romanzo Criminale is very good, but does at times, as implied by the title, feel like a novel, a fictional story.
Gomorra, on the other hand, using the same raw, in-your-face style as City of God, throws the viewer into a new, scary world - the real deal.Director Matteo Garrone, who co-wrote the screenplay with a bunch of collaborators (including Saviano himself), wisely decides to ditch the book's first-person storytelling, the only (possible) reference to the author being a young man named Roberto who helps businessman Franco (Toni Servillo) close a series of suspicious deals with various companies in the North of Italy (Venice is explicitly shown).
His story is one of five that constitute the film's narrative: along with him, there's also Don Ciro (Gianfelice Imparato), who pays the family members of imprisoned crooks; Pasquale (Salvatore Cantalupo), a tailor whose life is at risk because of his contacts with the Chinese (Italians don't like competition) and whose work ends up being worn by celebrities like Scarlett Johansson (Angelina Jolie in the book); and then there are two different examples of young blood, one a loyal boy who runs errands for his drug-dealing neighbors, the other two young punks who have watched Scarface way too often (a reference to the fact that a real-life Camorra boss had his villa designed exactly like Tony Montana's) and think they can take over.An ensemble gangster flick, then.
This is because Gomorra doesn't set out to be a real, straightforward story, but rather offer a series of bleak, extremely real examples of how the Camorra (or the System, though neither word is ever spoken in the film) controls everything.
Aside from the documentary-style cinematography and anxious cutting, the highest degree of realism comes from the cast: the only really famous actor in the film is Servillo, familiar from Paolo Sorrentino's filmography; the rest have a theatrical background or, in the case of the kids especially, were taken directly from the street (the movie was shot on location, and rumor has it the mother of a Camorra boss asked for a cameo).
Garners more respect than a spot on favorites list, "Gomorra" chronicles five seemingly disconnected stories with one thing in common: all are heavily influenced by a criminal organization run by the Camorras, an ominous mafia organization with a tight grip on Naples, Italy.
Within this feat of architecture we follow several threads including a money-man, a boy getting into the life on the lowest rung, a man starting out in the corrupt world of waste management, a black-market tailor looking to earn a bit more on the side and two young men who decide to seize power in their region from the old, fat men who sit at the top.
This is not the Italian gangsterisms of The Godfather where there is a certain sense of class and aspiration, in Gomorra the top men are trapped in the world the same as everyone else - with more money perhaps but they are not living in mansions or controlling things from a tropical island.
I didn't really like the technique employed throughout where the focus was on the subject in the close foreground and everything else was blurred, even as it came into play in the scene but otherwise it was well done, with the sudden moments of violence made more impacting by not being seen due to confusion simulated in the camera or by quick editing.Gomorra has been compared to City of God, Goodfellas and all the other crime films that get wheeled out for reviews.
It is not "enjoyable" per se due to the lack of flair, but it is a very good film nonetheless and, like City of God did with City of Men, it offers the potential for a mini-series to further explore and find stories from within this world..
Based on Roberto Saviano's best seller ( over 1.000.000 copies sold in Italy ), this movie is an inside look at Camorra's underworld in Naples, depicted as a sort of modern Dante's Inferno.
Using unsophisticated realist cinematography, editing and aesthetics, and through the choice of actors, most of whom are simply local residents of the neighborhood, the movie does throw you mercilessly in this inferno for over two hours, where you can smell the blood, feel the misery of Naples's slums and live that vicious circle of violence, despair and injustice.
This again shows the reality of the film and the lives of the people in Naples.The endings of the different story-lines complement each other in sending the message that you are either with or against the Camorra.
What makes this film terrifying is the fact that this is based from reality and that the people living there have no choice but to go along or face the consequences (usually death).Read more movie reviews at: championangels.wordpress.com.
The one story that was slightly interesting was the two wannabe gangsters.Unless you like movies just for the fact that it is set in Italy, avoid this nonsensical bore fest..
Anyway I'd like to point out something about: this work of Art is halfway between neorealism and epic style, the extraordinary use of lessons taken by best cinema makers in the world, the long sequences recalled me Hitchkock, the "dollies" sequences recalled me Sergio Leone, the choice in acting recalled me Ken Loach, the sapience in using noises and music Stanley Kubrick, and definitely the light looks chosen by Rotunno and Visconti; everything makes a no doubt new original artist named "Matteo Garrone"!
The title of the Italian film "Gomorrah," is a chilling descriptor and play on words referring to the "Camorra"- a notorious, violent, organized crime syndicate that controls the city of Naples and surrounding countryside.
Flat and at times hard to follow dramatization of Italy's modern-day crime families with a documentarian air about it by filmmaker Mateo Garrone based on Robert Saviano's book (so controversial the author is under 24/7 police protection in re: the real criminal threat out to silence him!) and executive produced by Martin Scorsese interweaves many plots including a fading don (Imparato), a middle-management type in the mob (Servillo) , an indemand textiles expert facing competition and retribution (Cantalupo) and two idiotic punks who think they live in a real-life SCARFACE world (Macor and Petrone).
It's a far cry from the gangster lifestyle we're used to seeing through the eyes of Brando, Pacino and Liotta, this is an existence that few wish to be (or survive to be) part of.The other stories show slick businessman Franco (Toni Servillo) running the aforementioned toxic waste dumping business and Salvatore Cantalupo's tailor, Pasquale, who is caught up in the violence after offering his services to Chinese fashion rivals.
Like the novel the movie is based on, Roberto Saviano's Gomorra, which forced its author to leave the country to save his life, Mattheo Garrone's movie is the definitive depiction of one of the most violent branches of the Italian mafia, the Neapolitan Camorra.
The sense of realism is so palpable it feels like someone is following these people around with a camera shooting random snippets of footage as they go around extortioning others, stealing drugs and coldcocking each other.As a bleak, realistic documentation of Italian organized crime, Gomorra is undoubtedly a rousing success.
Matteo Garrone's Italian neo-realist crime drama Gomorrah is a set of five separate stories about the Camorra crime syndicate in Naples, Italy.
There are no grand narratives about respect and power like we find in American mafia films; instead, the film tells the stories of five ordinary people from all walks of life and how they are all sucked into the Camorra's crime web.
This film by Matteo Garrone explores the violent crime clans of Naples known as the Gamorra that have an estimated 25,000 members on all levels of the criminal ladder and are involved in the drug trade, toxic waste disposal, construction, trafficking, extortion, public housing and lots of killings.
I came into GOMORRAH expecting an Italian version of CITY OF GOD: a grim, gritty story following would-be gangsters as they go about their business on city streets, where violence and corruption are matter of fact and ruthlessness the norm.I got nothing like.Honestly speaking, I found GOMORRAH a bore.
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.
A Cannes prize winner, the film weaves a complex look at the activities of the Camorra, a crime syndicate that had the book author Roberto Saviano put under police protective custody for his expose on their activities, which range from drugs to dealing in toxic wastes, and their extensive money laundering activities which the closing credits stated their involvement in financing the new World Trade Centre in New York.It's a gritty, unflinching look at the crime activities a modern day Italian crime family undertakes day to day, and the community that it both supports, and taps from.
An incredibly well-balanced and viscerally stunning film, Gomorra really must be seen twice to fully appreciate the complex and relationships between the divergent story lines and the lives they represent.Gomorra is a film about organized crime, but it is in no way the "mafia movie" that American films dealing with similar themes so often grow to be.
after many films about gangsters, crimes, South Italy, for the viewer must be clear the entire story.
The film dragged and was only good at the times when the the more interesting narratives were juxtaposed together.I would not recommend this film as it is very boring and you do not care about the characters, also, there is no pay off, so you're waiting for something to happen but it doesn't!I think people will appreciate the directing and how the film is viewed through the characters but it is far too long!Enjoy!.
If the title of the film was not Gomorra, I would not at all have guessed this was about organized crime.This review should contain 10 lines of text but I feel there is nothing to tell about this chaos of pictures..
I am now used to reading through reviews lauding films as if the directors and screenwriters deserve knighthoods and I again find myself wondering whether I watched the same movie.Gomorra(h) is about the most mediocre, tepid and uninspiring 'exposé' of characters and lifestyle that you are ever likely to see.
Gomorra's achilles heel is that its independent stories are not only (dare I say it) boring, but they leave the film creaking with a lack of structure and even the characters wondering 'who's on who's side?' I am a fan of Gangster movies, mob movies, dark movies...Gomorra, for all it may be real and representative of Italian sub-culture, struggled to engage me and to be honest, it didn't open my eyes to anything I didn't already know, understand and could imagine.An entertaining picture?
So the Academy had no real reason not to nominate the film.Gomorrah tells five small stories set in tower blocks of Napoli and the affects that the Mafia and organised crime has one them.
Here Matteo Garrone co-writes and directs an excellent complex film about the Mafia and general working class life in the Southern Italian city.
"The Godfather" is filmed in a wonderful style, through grey-brown filters and "Goodfellas" is a film of endless stylistic choices from Martin Scorsese, but neither of them have the realistic intensity of "Gomorrah", a film which deals with the brutal and violent Camorra of Italy.Shot in hand-held, raw and kinetic fashion, "Gomorrah" deals with the gangland violence and shady dealings which have turned Naples into a city of crime and squalor.
Also, its worth while to watch it twice to appreciate the details that you may have a missed the first time around.The depiction of the crime families in Naples seems to be true to life, with a good build up of the multiple characters.
It was something of a revelation to watch gangsters in this part of the world, as they are nothing like those in the Sopranos, or the Godfather, or any of the other great crime movies I've seen.
Because there are five stories going on in the film the director fails to actually explain who these people are working for and why they are doing what they are doing or are they actually Mafia at all?
Thrust into a world where violence and crime is accepted as a way of life, the camera shows the unexpected, as it should, and it is almost always violent.Five major plot threads are followed, and the director presents them well enough for one to care to see this through.
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.
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.
I will not add anything to the plot as it has been told many times over here; i saw Gomorra for the first time yesterday; i was waiting for it to be aired on Sky Cinema because i liked the book and i must say i have been impressed how close to the real thing this movie feels.
There's little humour here, and Mateo Garrone has captured a world where it's pretty easy to see why.Running at nearly two and a half hours, the lack of light further makes it an arguous struggle to sit through, the first time anyway, but Gomorrah leaves you feeling like you've seen a thoroughly absorbing and powerful interwined set of stories that pull no punches and offer no hope.
There can be little doubt as to whether or not Matteo Garrone's Italian crime film, entitled Gomorra, is an ambitious piece; a fluctuating, sweeping, soaring, towering film flitting in and out of numerous stories covering various characters of varying shades of grey as they go through life effectively making money out of others people's misery.
Each thread could make their own very interesting film, so putting them all together may be too much, but kudos to the director Matteo Garrone for allowing each to breathe free and conclude their respective arcs.The unflinching look into this underbelly of the drug trade, hitting home at the end when you find that the crime world here actually invests in US projects including the new Twin Tower site, is tough to watch at times.
Ultra-realistic take on the book by Roberto Saviano, this film displays the camorra, i.e. the current biggest crime syndicate in the world.
Set in the violent underworld of Naples, this movie focuses on different characters involvement in the crime scene.
What I got was dark, horrible, brutally authentic, and brilliant.I really think that this movie sets itself apart from other gangster films that I have seen, in that it really offers you no chance to empathise with the characters.