Gomorrah

Gomorrah closes with hard-hitting facts about the Camorra better placed at the beginning to throw perspective on the free-forming story of easy-come-easier-go life and death for citizens caught in Camorra catchment areas.

Clans forming the Camorra have carved up Naples and Caserta, killing 4,000 people in thirty years, more than any other criminal or terrorist group. Outside of arms and drug trafficking, they've become established in construction, textiles, and other legitimate ventures, and monopolise toxic waste dumping, cutting corners that have led to a 20% cancer jump in regions affected.

Needless to say, there is no honour among these thieves.

Garrone and five co-writers, including Saviano, split the story into five concurrent plots, dropping the audience into the middle of a mob hit in a tanning salon, leaving them to sink or swim.

A guide of sorts comes in the careworn, nervous shape of Don Ciro (Imparato), a bagman paying the families of imprisoned clan members, unable to handle the threat of death as the violence escalates.

The similarly middle-aged Pasquale, a tailor working for a clan subcontractor, discovers offering expert advice to a Chinese rival could be a fatal move, while university graduate Roberto (Paternoster) is offered a promising internship at mob boss Franco’s (Servillo) waste management business, and Toto (Abruzzese) is the next generation, thirteen years old and finding himself in too deep.

Skirting the perimeter, jacking the clans’ arms stashes and ripping off drug suppliers, are Marco and Ciro (Macor and Pettrone), born to lose punks with a Scarface obsession.

Basing the action around a massive, crumbling apartment block that houses the soldiers and servants (i.e. the poor, junkies, gamblers) who serve the Camorra bosses, Matteo’s detached, observational style and analytical pacing will jar with those expecting the adrenalin rush of City of God, but his unfussy documentary-style approach provides an authentic feeling expose of life where law and order run scared. 

Sprawling and angry, Gomorrah’s  small episodes form an ultimately overwhelming portrait of the clans’ invisible empire – from Toto’s initiation, taking a bullet while wearing a makeshift vest, and his coerced betrayal of a loved one, to Franco bullying a dying man into giving up more land for waste disposal, or Don Ciro begging an old friend, now enemy, for shelter.

Meanwhile, Pasquale sees Scarlett Johansson wearing one of his frocks at the Venice film festival, revealing how high up the food chain Camorra influence runs.

The violence is brief but shattering and two slayings, with Don Ciro and Toto caught in the middle, are amongst the most terrifying depictions of mob violence caught on camera.

Blame TV’s magisterial The Wire if Gomorrah seems superficial. But whereas TV has multiple episodes to penetrate the heart of its story, Matteo and co are to be commended for this all-encompassing overview of organised crime.

Rob Daniel