Gomorrah

Bomb Rating: 

I expected powerful Tony Soprano-type gangsters. Instead I got a nervous cast of destitute nancy-boys from Oliver Twist.

If you’ve heard all of the hype about this movie being a revelation for mafia films everywhere, you wouldn’t be the only one. You also wouldn’t be the only one joining the lynch mob to find the idiot who said that. I expected powerful Tony Soprano-type gangsters. Instead I got a nervous cast of destitute nancy-boys from Oliver Twist. Street kids and petty thieves live their unnecessarily violent little lives in front of you, trying to show you the real mafia.  

I know what the real mafia is. The real mafia is Scarface, the Godfather and Donny Brasco. It’s not a socially decrepit group of Italians clawing over each other to survive. What underwater cave did writer Roberto Saviano surface from? I could have sent Dakota Fanning into those slums with a sharp toothbrush and she would have ended that perpetual war in seconds. 

The film has a hundred things happening at the same time. In an effort to show us the "real mafia" they forgot that they were making a real film that requires a workable narrative. I faintly remember flashes of Italian faces before me, but who they were and what they were up to, I'll never know.

It’s almost like director Matteo Garrone tried too hard to debunk the gangster stereotype. Gangsters don’t wear suits, gangsters aren’t old emphysemic businessmen, gangsters are people too...what the hell Garrone? You just stripped the genre of all its fundamental elements! What’s the point of watching now? There are only three good reasons why this movie ever crossed into America. The first is that the director owes some people money here. The second is that he was brought up in such a filthy environment that gnats ate away part of his brain and he can’t process logical thought anymore. Either that or he used his life savings to bribe every film critic ever to have watched this soporific movie.   

Gomorrah made me yawn so many times I got lockjaw. It bears no relation to any watchable movie I’ve ever seen. It's like walking outside to get a breath of fresh air, only to discover oxygen has been replaced with carbon-monoxide. Artsy movies are generally flaming piles of collected mind vomit anyway but Gomorrah is a pioneer in that genre. Stay home and watch The Godfather instead.  Or even High School Musical 3, because any high school environment probably has a closer resemblance to organized crime than this self-important snooze-fest.

To spread the word about this Gomorrah review on Twitter.