Review of Gomorrah (2008) by Siwaporn W — 21 Jun 2009

This film was compared to the Godfather in the marketing material I read - which is totally misleading and undersells the film's merits. Where The Godfather was about what happens in the upper echelons of criminality, Gomorrah traverses much earthier territory, the rampant criminality in a huge complex of council-type flats in a contemporary Italian city.

Because of that it's much more closely related to the City Of God. The storytelling is deliberately prosaic, with lots of interchangeable characters used - devices showing just how utterly mundane crime and 'normalised' crime is for people born into it, or those with few other prospects.

The scene in which young boys don a bulletproof vest as a test of their nerve should become a classic. Less of a mob film than an articulate movie about the criminal underclasses.