Maidgethma
Wonderfully offbeat film!
CommentsXp
Best movie ever!
Whitech
It is not only a funny movie, but it allows a great amount of joy for anyone who watches it.
Hayleigh Joseph
This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.
SnoopyStyle
This is a collection of five stories about people who are touched by the gritty Neapolitan crime world. There is a gang war erupting. Don Ciro is a scared middleman. He is jumped by the other side and forced to take them back to his location. Roberto works in waste management and his boss Franco is dumping toxic wastes. Pasquale works as a high fashion tailor controlled by the mob. He moonlights for their Chinese competitor but it goes wrong. Marco and Ciro are young gangster wannabes. They get in over their heads.This is a great faux-realistic take on the modern mob. It opens with a bang. I will always remember the waste disposal because of the subject matter. The two youngsters are probably the most compelling characters. There are some ups and downs. It's a disjointed watch. It's a wide-ranging take on the subject and proves to be an effective one.
PopCulturedwithMovieMike
Gomorrah expertly brings to life a side of Naples you won't see on a post card. If you are expecting a Hollywood gangster film, you are looking in the wrong place. Unlike films like Goodfellas and The Godfather, Gomorrah does not romanticize the gangster lifestyle. Instead, the film shows the violent, brutal lifestyle of one of the deadliest organized crime units in the world. The little known, real life Comorra. There are no expensive suits. There are no shiny, black Crown Vics. There are no big houses with a kidney shaped pools. What we get instead is a documentary style look into the life of the Comorra and the people who are effected by them, which is seemingly everybody. This is exactly what the film strives to do; show us how the influence of the Comorra spreads through Naples like veins in in a body. Gomorrah chronicles the lives of 5 separate story lines. Don Ciro is a timid middleman who delivers money to families of the Comorra. He lives in fear of the very people who employ him. Toto is an otherwise good boy who helps his mother's store by delivering groceries to the locals. He is literally saturated in the lifestyle of the Comorra (and probably has been his whole life) and therefore joins up with the local gang. Roberto is a recent college grad whose father gets him a job with a local business man who profits from the illegal dumping of waste. Pasquele is a local fashion designer whose business is being run by the mob. Then there is the most entertaining of the bunch, Marco and Ciro, two Tony Montana wannabes that see the life of a gangster as romantic as the Hollywood movies make it out to be. Unfortunately, these five story lines is where the film fails for me. We are introduced to so many characters in such a short span of time that it's hard to keep everybody straight. I also feel that the film struggles to juggle all the threads. Instead of focusing on two or three story lines and fleshing out each character, we get short glimpses of each story. Just enough to see how they live, but not enough to care for them. I believe this was the intention of the film. Kind of like "a day in the life" look at the most brutal mafia in the world. Keeping the audience at arms length might have been the intention of the filmmakers, but for that reason I couldn't enjoy the film as much as I would have liked. Gomorrah succeeds in bringing the savage climate in which the people of Naples live. The actors don't seem like actors at all. They seem like real people. The environments are picture perfect and show the gritty, impoverished side of a beautiful city. In the end, Gomorrah's 5 story lines fail to deliver the emotional connection I need to be fully immersed in a story. There are also parts of the story that remain unclear. For example, there are two rival clans at war, but it's never made clear who is on which side. I really wanted to love Gomorrah, but it just fell short. Instead of being the classic I was hoping for, it's just merely good.
kenjha
A tailor, a delivery boy, a waste collector, a tax collector, and two punks walk into a bar...that may have made for a fun movie. Instead, these characters become involved with the mob and the result is a dreary drama. The script is so disjointed that during the first half hour, a multitude of characters is introduced and it is not clear who is doing what to whom. Eventually it becomes apparent that five stories are being told. Unfortunately, none of the five stories is the least bit interesting and film goes on way too long. Not only is the script lackluster, but the direction makes matters worse, with the annoying hand-held camera and clumsy framing.
Downtown242
After reading all the praise heaped on this movie, I expected something interesting. What I got instead was a couple hours of following around people while they do rather boring things. I didn't really think it was possible to make organized crime seem so banal. Perhaps the movie might have benefited from a few less characters. There was never really a reason to care about any of the people in this film. There was no real story to follow. There was no climax to the movie. It was all pretty much just a flat line. I think all of that stems from a complete lack of focus. Because it jumps from one character to the next, there is no cohesive plot. Rather we just get several stories that don't really leave us with anything. We see people being shot at, buying drugs, beaten up, but the audience is kept at such a distance from the action that it never really has an impact.