The real Sopranos (Gomorrah (DVD))

Member Name: Ailran

Product:	Gomorrah (DVD)
Date:	03/08/09 (97 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Intriguing true(ish) story

Disadvantages: Violent and a bit scatershot at times.

Gomorrah is an Italian mafia film with a difference. Based on the best selling book by Roberto Saviano it looks at the mafia from the inside by introducing and following people instead of having a storyline that focuses on the action and violence associated with the criminal organisation.

The main characters in the film are of varying ages and have a widely different level of activity in the mafia gang contolling the area of Naples where the film is set. In fact their actual involvement in any criminal actions are very minimal.
Gomorrah avoids the expected and traditional expose of the mafia by concentrating on the peripheral people involved, doing their everyday jobs, some just like us, but just for a less than legal organisation.

The main characters include an older man whose only job is to deliver the weekly (monthly?) payments to old 'pensioners', to families whose men are in jail and the like; a young, just about teenage boy who is about to be drawn into the culture of crime and two early twenties men who idolise Tony Montana from Scarface and want to start their own gang and rise to the top like him.

The stories are all separate, connected only by the mafia gang that controls the town. They switch back and forth in the style of Amores Perros or Crash, but without the one focal point that ties all the characters together. The characters don't know each other, in fact they never meet each other, they are background to each others stories.

The gang pervades everything, the town is dominated by it and all that it does. The stench of fear competes with the aura of jealousy and ambition and the lives of everyone in the town are affected and influenced by the criminals.

Gomorrah is a long film, over 2 hours, but it doesn't feel like it at all. It starts off very slow, after the opening scene anyway which cleverly leads you into thinking that the film will be like every other mafia based movie you have ever seen, but then builds and builds up as the story progresses. The tension and anticipation growing ever heavier inside you as you wait for the inevitable explosion. You know it is coming but you don't know which storyline is going to be the one that causes it all.
By having a group of main characters you also have no idea of who is going to live and who is going die.
It could be all of them or it could be none of them. One big advantage thriller films have when not made by the USA or UK is that we have no idea of who the actors are. If they are big names they are not likely to be known by us and because of this we don't have the usual preconceptions over who is going to live and who is going to die based on who is playing them. It really could be any of the characters who gets gunned down next.

Gomorrah works so well because of its simplicity, in fact apart from one big storyline about burying waste materials it could almost be a fly on the wall documentary following the lives of people in and around the mafia. The style of the filming and the direction is done in the same way, it makes you not only get caught up in the story but also, sometimes, makes you even feel like you are there, holding the camera yourself as you watch.

Obviously you know that this isn't real but it just looks so realistic. Add in the fact that a lot of what you see the characters doing is so mundane, so like everyday things even we might do, that it just makes it all the more explosive when the story does finally boil over.

I saw this at the Cambridge Film Festival Sept 2008 but it is now available on DVD and is well worth renting or buying if you love gangster movies. This certainly gives you a deeper look into the workings of the mafia, whether or not it is a truthful look inside them I guess we will never know for certain but seeing as the author was threatened for details in his book you think there must be elements of truth to it! Gomorrah, the movie, does manage to entertain and inform at the same time which makes it a thoroughly entertaining movie to watch, in a violent way.

Summary: A look inside the world of a Mafia infected town