Gomorra

Matteo Garrone
2008

I'm a little sick and tired of reading reviews for this film claiming that it's "not your average gangster film" with headlines that say things like "Even Tony Soprano Would Be Afraid of These Guys." It's obvious on the surface that Matteo Garrone's adaptation of Roberto Saviano's incendiary book is a completely different animal than the romanticized visions of tommy-gun wielding bootleggers and wiseacre track-suited greaseballs that usually appear in gangster films. Amusingly enough this self-reflexive cinematic worship manifests itself in the picture in the form of two rash punks looking to make it in the Camorra empire, as they wax poetic about "Scarface" (1983) while flying ever closer to the syndicate's flame. Stripped of the usual overly styled Mafia flick trappings "Gamorra" makes for a very engaging, very adult, and very tense viewing experience as a handful of youngsters and average Joes become grist for the all encompassing monolithic crime machine. It's the pervasiveness of the Camorra that impresses most - far from a conspiratorial round table of villains, this is a veritable army of plainclothes men enacting business openly in the streets by day. I'm amazed the film hasn't won more cinematography awards than it has as the photography combines both the documentary realist approach with a heightened artistic aesthetic to remarkable visual ends. "Gomorra" is well worth the photography alone.