Gomorra (Matteo Garrone, 2008): Italy

Reviewed by Kevin Tran. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

Americans have seen so much on-screen violence influenced by the Italian mob, from 1930s Warner Bros. crime films to The Godfather to the films of Martin Scorsese to The Sopranos, that many may think they know everything about what it is like to be a gangster. This is the mindset of two characters in Matteo Garrone’s Gomorra , a film that takes a genre that usually glorifies murderers and drug smugglers to an entirely new level of realism that is bone chilling.

Gomorra brings together the stories of different people living in a modern Italian city, all very different but who are connected by their ties to the mob. The stories are intercut together, though are only related by the film’s setting. Each sub-plot reveals a new aspect about the Gomorra crime families.

One of these sub-plots follow two punks attempting to trump the Gomorra by stealing their guns and scheming ways to make it big. Of course, they’re influenced by the media perception of the Italian mob. They quote Tony Montana’s line from Scarface, scream in a juvenile manner as they shoot the automatic rifles that they stole, and try to fulfill the gangster’s ideas of being a man by snorting coke and womanizing.

Everyone (both those in the film and those watching)  already has a prefabricated idea of what will happen in this story because they have seen it happen so many times in films and television for so many years. Yet the characters, as well of the audience, have never this side of terror and violence.

Garrone is able to create heavy tension through editing and by the strong performances of non-actors. At the same time, he builds a cloud of paranoia that is unsettling. The first time you see someone murdered in the film is a complete surprise, and you are then constantly waiting for the next hit to happen as if it can happen at anytime to anyone–and too often, it does.