"Gomorrah" - Film Review

The Comorra is one of the world’s largest criminal organizations based in Italy. Based on true events, the film Gomorrah shows the poisonous influence the criminal outfit has on everything around it. An early sequence shows a man distributing money. Every experience in every home he goes into is rather casual. They offer him food and they exchange pleasantries. This is par for the course. Everyone is used to it.

This is why it’s not all that surprising when one the film’s protagonists, a young boy, is drawn into the criminal proceedings. We want to yell out, “Don’t do it!” But he’s participating in initiations rituals before we know it. No one can seem to escape the reach of the Comorra. 

The film is more interested in people on the fringes of the criminal operation. We don’t see the bosses all that much. The film’s interests lie with the little people who get caught up in this. There’s the money distributor. There’s the boy initiated into the Comorra. There are two young men acting as would-be gangster, free agents, who foolishly go up against the Comorra. There's a tailor who attempts to work for a competing garment factory.

Much of the film’s story takes place just off camera. There’s a gang war taking place, but we see little of this. We learn about it mainly from word of mouth. The film rarely wants to shift its perspectives from the characters it has its eye on. There are other scenes that contextualize the messes the many protagonists have gotten themselves into, but they’re the least important parts of the film. 

There’s a sense of inevitable tragedy hanging over the film. We know that bad fates are on the horizon for these characters and the film draws out these fates with an increasingly unsettling feeling of dread. It’s a film interested in how no matter how hard you try or how smart you think you are, you can’t escape the reach of the Comorra. It may not be death that awaits you, but you’re sense of self-worth or your innocence or your control over your own life is in the balance. 

The film has a grittiness to it. This is not a film that attempts to make the gangster lifestyle look pretty or appealing. Many of these people are living in poverty or just above the poverty line. A criminal organization such as Comorra can be as successful as it is because it fills a certain role. People living in Naples and Caserta accept the Comorra’s existence because it’s simply become matter of factly part of life and because many of them also benefit from it.      

The film is also interested in depicting the mundanity of much of this. There are long stretches where people are going about their lives. This also plays to the film’s favor. The film wants to cut through the cliches and lies about the gangster lifestyle. These mundane stretches are often broken unexpectedly by excruciating moments of violence. The violence is bubbling just under the surface. It’s inescapable.  

The destruction by the Comorra isn’t just through violence though. The film spends a large amount of time showing how the Comorra dumps toxic waste that will ruin the environment. They’re literally poisoning what they come into contact with. One man working for the waste management company is so disgusted he quits, but the operation keeps going. 

Gomorrah intertwines the many different stories of its characters to build up a mosaic, bleak portrait of the Comorra and their criminal operations. While its grimness, and scathing realism can be unpleasant to sit through at times, the film's exacting look at the toll of the gangster activities and those caught up in it is powerful. It's often times too slow or too impenetrable or too scattered, but the accumulated effect and end result is something that's hard to argue against.

Grade: A-