In Theaters
A mob film that’s as far from the genre’s standard operating procedure as could be imagined, Gomorrah paints a bleak and impressionistic picture of a society not just riddled with gangsters, but crippled by them. Not only are the gangsters shown here resolutely unglamorous, they’re disloyal, cowardly, and frequently downright stupid; if there were any cops around in this world, these guys wouldn’t last a day. But the Neapolitan towns the film sets itself in seem hardly the kind of place capable of mustering a vigorous law enforcement response to the random brutality and open-air drug markets. Instead, the society appears little more than a host body for the Camorra (the particularly thuggish Neapolitan version of the Mafia), existing only to provide more euros for the weekly take and bodies for the slaughter…
Gomorrah has been playing in limited release for a few weeks in larger cities, should hopefully be expanding throughout the country over the spring. You can read the full review at filmcritic.com.
Chris Barsanti 