Gomorrah

Made by creators with courage, Gomorrah is an authentically chilling work with great informational value. Rather than being a handicap, the deliberate coldness of the film and the distance from the characters is suitable for the world it depicts. What is a handicap, however, is the film’s unnecessary length. Select only the most important things, shorten it to 100 minutes and it could have been a hit! (08/03/2009)

Boring? Maybe for lovers of mafia fairy tales. If you like the raw and unadorned style and you are interested in modern Godfathers, then you can hope for a similar emotional impact to that which Gomorrah had on me. I'm not going full out only because the film is really too long and Garrone (no matter how great of a job he did!) just can’t keep up. In my opinion, Gomorrah is one of the most impressive films in recent months. But I highly recommend that you at least read about what you are going to see. There were quite a few stray souls who came to see the next The Departed in the movie theatre. (13/03/2009)

It doesn't make sense to view Gomorrah as an entertaining genre film about the Italian organized crime environment; in fact, it deliberately resigns from that notion and is more of a fictionalized documentary that analyzes the structure, manifestations, and impacts of mafia activities. Extortion, drug trafficking, smuggling, slave labor, manipulation of government contracts, or trade in toxic waste – the film shows it all firsthand and offers a perfect disillusionment about the mafia as some organization with charismatic personalities and a functioning code of honor. These are rather creatures that have emerged from the lowest social strata and have remained mentally at that level as well. The film doesn't have a cohesive plot; it's more of a series of images and stories about how organized crime replaces state structures and controls people's lives. As I mentioned, it doesn't make sense to expect entertainment like in The Godfather from it, but rather a raw look inside. By the way, the investigative journalist who wrote the book of the same name and moved incognito among this assembly in southern Italy is in a worse situation than Salman Rushdie was when the fatwa was declared against him. Overall impression: 90%. (25/03/2011)

This is a different movie than "The Godfather". It's not about how cool it is to be a gangster, how good it looks, and how epic it can be. This is a movie about how disgusting it is, how bloody it is, and how it can affect everyone, for different reasons. Well, actually, I'm glad I don't have to live in Italy. A well-made different perspective on the mafia. (11/04/2016)