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Listen… I’m sure the Camorra is a fairly brutal organization that is one of the most fascinating mafia stories around, but that fact doesn’t make this a good movie. While some films ride their subject to turn out amazing, other films can take the world’s best subject and turn it into complete shit. This is what Matteo Garrone does with Gomorra, a film that won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival… once again showing that Cannes is for artsy fartsy douches. Honestly, I could probably make up a film if a bunch of firecrackers going off, and then put some words at the end talking about a major world issue and win a fucking prize at Cannes. This festival isn’t so much concerned with good movies as it is with movies that “say something”… even if the way they say it is drier than a mummy’s snatch when they do it.

Gomorra has one of those needlessly complicated narrative structures that intertwine plots and characters… a sure recipe to please festival fucks. Five storylines are blended, hacked, and butchered into a mish-mash of blandness by director Garrone. There’s a kid who wants to be a gangster, two independent hooligans who run afoul of the local boss, a money man who delivers pay to residents for support, and some business-type dude who uses the surrounding area as a place to dump toxic waste… and then there’s another one that I’m missing, because I don’t give a shit. These five stories are filmed in an artistic way which is fun to look at, but which quickly gets old after a while.

Director Garrone has an eye for location and interesting imagery, but he does nothing to capture the human element of his subject. His characters exist as ruthless mafia caricatures, which gets boring after 2+ hours. The people don’t feel real, no one stands out, and Garrone’s non-traditional narrative structure never lets you spend enough time with the characters to get to know them. On top of this… nothing really happens through the whole movie. It’s simply a whole bunch of nice imagery, bland characters, and then a couple of blurbs at the end of the movie about how bad the Camorra is. Weak.

If you’re looking for the best mafia movie ever made… this isn’t even in the top 50… seriously. I’d rather watch Richard Grieco in Mobsters than watch this movie. This movie put me to sleep twice… leading me to having to watch parts over again… parts which sucked the first time around. The violence in the film is cool, but it doesn’t seem to be the point of the film. The true point of the film is “look how diverse and powerful the Camorra is,” but the director botches it all with a nebulous look at a few storylines that, in the end, don’t amount to shit. This film is neither enlightening nor entertaining.

Final Synopsis: Gomorra is a bloated piece of douche bag cinema. The movie sucks, it’s boring, and don’t be fooled by all the hype the film received. Skip this and watch an actual good mafia movie.

Points Lost: -1 for being boring, -1 for an asshole narrative structure, -1 for being rather ball-less, -1 for not making the characters seem human, -1 for having too wide a range of focus, -1 for lots of scenes that are pretty, but which don’t actually do anything, -1 for shitty characters

Lesson Learned: Everyone in Italy loves wearing knock-off basketball jerseys.

Burning Question: What was the fifth storyline?

Gomorra 3/10

Tags: 2008, european, european drama, foreign, foreign drama, gangster, Gangster Movie, gangsters, italian, italian drama, latest movie reviews, mafia, matteo garrone, recent3, shitty movies, the camorra