Gomorra (2008)

Director:

Matteo Garrone

Writers:

Roberto Saviano (book)
Maurizio Braucci (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

16 May 2008 (Italy)

Genre:

Crime | Drama

Plot:

An inside look at Italy's modern-day crime families.

Plot Keywords:

Italy | Camorra | City | Long Take | Chinese

Awards:

Nominated for Golden Globe. Another 19 wins & 15 nominations

Cast

Toni Servillo	...	Franco
Gianfelice Imparato	...	Don Ciro
Maria Nazionale	...	Maria
Salvatore Cantalupo	...	Pasquale
Gigio Morra	...	Iavarone
Salvatore Abruzzese	...	Totò
Marco Macor	...	Marco
Ciro Petrone	...	Ciro
Carmine Paternoster	...	Roberto
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Antonio Aiello	...	Famel
Angelo Aliberti	...	Man in quarry
Vincenzo Altamura	...	Gaetano (as Gaetano Altamura)
Antonio Amato	...	Totò's friend
Dora Angelone	...	Maria's friend
Denis Bajrami	...	Kid driving truck
Antonio Bastelli	...	Totò's friend
Vincenzo Bombolo	...	Bombolone
Leonardo Caforio	...	Gigante
Rosaria Capuozzo	...	Cashier
Luigi Caputo	...	Luigi
Domenico Caruso	...	Totò's friend
Salvatore Caruso	...	Quarry director
Vincenzo Caso	...	Enzo
Enza Castaldo	...	Farmer's daughter
Italo Celoro	...	Farmer
Fortunato Cerlino	...	Farmer's son
Lucia Cerullo	...	Woman in solarium
Giuseppina Cervizzi	...	Girl
Roberto Comacchio	...	Trucker
Fabio Corvietto	...	Totò's friend
Adolfo Crisato	...	Killer at the beach
Ettore Cuocolo	...	Book-keeper
Antonio D'Angelo	...	Baron
Marcello D'Angelo	...	Gang member
Maria De Fortis Nadi	...	Serena
Carlo Del Sorbo	...	Don Carlo
Claudio De Lucia	...	Tout
Gaetano di Tota	...	Totò's friend
Vincenzo Fabricino	...	Pitbull
Massimo Emilio Gobbi	...	Enterpreneur
Rosa Granato	...	Girl
Armando Irace	...	Killer
Gianni Jasar	...	Kid driving truck
Anna Liparulo	...	Girl
Guoquine Long	...	Long (as Long Guoqine)
Salvatore Lorino	...	Wounded trucker
Manuela Lo Sicco	...	Moglie di Pasquale
Santolo Matrone	...	Gang member
Bjaran Memed	...	Kid driving truck
Costantino Migliaccio	...	Gang member
Andrea Mincione	...	Ex-serviceman
Tetik Nesim	...	Kid driving truck
Francesco Paesano	...	O'Chiatto
Francesco Pirozzi	...	Michele
Gabriele Rainone	...	Policeman
Italo Renda	...	Italo
Antonietta Restelli	...	Girl
Salvatore Ruocco	...	Boxer
Salvatore Russo	...	O'Lungo
Vittorio Russo	...	Vittorio
Simone Sacchettino	...	Simone
Alfonso Santagata	...	Dante Serini
Anna Sarnelli	...	Totò's mother
Antonio Spina	...	O'Zi Bi
Marco Stanchi	...	Killer
Salvatore Striano	...	Scissionista
Addolorata Tenizio	...	Widow
Bernardino Terracciano	...	Bernardino
Giuseppe Terracciano	...	Killer at the beach
Tommy Terracciano	...	Night club cashier (as Giuseppe Terraciano)
Salvatore Troie	...	Cashier
Giovanni Venosa	...	Giovanni
Emanuela Villagrossi	...	Northern enterpreneur
Ibrahim Yacoubou	...	Captain
Ronghua Zhang	...	Xian (as Zhang Ronghua)
Linhe Zheng	...	Interpreter
Riccardo Zinna	...	Enterpreneur

Also Known As:

Gomorrah (International: English title) (UK) (USA)
Sei storie brevi (Italy) (fake working title)

Runtime:

137 min

Country:

Italy

Language:

Italian | Mandarin | French

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Italy:T | UK:15 | Ireland:16 | Portugal:M/16 | Canada:14A (Alberta/British Columbia/Manitoba/Ontario) | Norway:15 | Brazil:18 | Finland:K-15 | Sweden:15 | Netherlands:16 | Spain:18 | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Argentina:16 | USA:Not Rated | Hong Kong:III | Singapore:M18 | New Zealand:R16 | Mexico:C | France:U (with warning) | Australia:M

Filming Locations:

Naples, Campania, Italy

Company:

Fandango

Trivia:

Italy's Official Submission to the Best Foreign Language Film Category of the 81st Annual Academy Awards (2009) (TV).

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: At the beginning of the movie you can clearly see the American guy's belly moving, when his dead body remains on the chair, where he has been having his nails cut.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Gomorra, cinque storie brevi (2008)

Soundtrack:

Must Pray

A bit fragmented and unhelpful to the uninitiated but still a bleak and realistic drama

Some publications gave Gomorra a perfect rating, while others gave more basic reviews but, in a week where The Times reviewed about 10 new releases and gave this 5 stars and everything else 1 or 2, I decided this was a film I should check out and that The House Bunny could perhaps wait for another time (specifically, when it is the last film on Earth). Gomorra opens with a beauty salon hit which I imagine is meant to introduce us to the violent and treacherous world of the Cammora crime syndicate in the locality of Naples, Italy. As an impacting opening, it does work but the "introduction" idea is sadly where the film is roundly weak and it does mean that it has the potential to confuse.

Before I get a barrage of messages pointing out to me that cousins shouldn't marry, I do not mean that I could not follow the specific threads of the film but just that the film offers nothing to inform the new viewer of the world that we are about to enter. I'm not sure the best of doing this but certainly at first I didn't totally appreciate the scale of the organisation, the structure or the setting and it took me a minute as a result to get into the stories. Unlike similar films, the separate threads never really come together in any way other than they share a grounding in location and the problem of the Cammora. Outside of a specific introduction for those coming in cold, the film does give a sort of introduction to the problem as we first follow one of the characters around the nightmarish, enclosed estate of flats which seems to perform the task of judge and prison-officer as those born into it have little opportunity to escape it and essentially have their fate sealed by virtue of their environment.

Within this feat of architecture we follow several threads including a money-man, a boy getting into the life on the lowest rung, a man starting out in the corrupt world of waste management, a black-market tailor looking to earn a bit more on the side and two young men who decide to seize power in their region from the old, fat men who sit at the top. In terms of engagement, there isn't really a huge emotional draw within the film but instead it all feels very realistic and dead - so it is not so much that you feel for the specific characters so much as you have a constant sense of hopelessness and of how small and petty it all it. This is not the Italian gangsterisms of The Godfather where there is a certain sense of class and aspiration, in Gomorra the top men are trapped in the world the same as everyone else - with more money perhaps but they are not living in mansions or controlling things from a tropical island. The delivery of the film helps this as it is well shot on location and has a hand-held feel of grit and dirt. I didn't really like the technique employed throughout where the focus was on the subject in the close foreground and everything else was blurred, even as it came into play in the scene but otherwise it was well done, with the sudden moments of violence made more impacting by not being seen due to confusion simulated in the camera or by quick editing.

Gomorra has been compared to City of God, Goodfellas and all the other crime films that get wheeled out for reviews. In most ways this is not really a fair description because Gomorra does not have the style and flair of those films, nor do all the narrative threads come together neatly in the way we have come to expect. However it is still an engagingly bleak and realistic look into the world of the Cammora that is well done even if it has flaws. It is not "enjoyable" per se due to the lack of flair, but it is a very good film nonetheless and, like City of God did with City of Men, it offers the potential for a mini-series to further explore and find stories from within this world.