One Paragraph Movie Review: Gomorrah

One hundred and ninety-second film: Gomorrah, which is called ‘Gomorra’ in its native Italy and is about the Camorra, the massive and real criminal gang based in Naples — bigger and older than the Sicilian Mafia — that this very much based-on-real-life film is about. This is a gangster movie with an Italian accent and perhaps twenty seconds of glamour — the rest is all concrete dust, rusted hinges, grimy sweat and public housing. The bits of business the gang concerns its different tentacles with are broad and varied — looking after its prison widows, drug trafficking, toxic waste disposal and haute couture knock-offs — but the main gang activity seems to be killing people for not very important reasons at all. The deaths are sudden, brutal, and unromanticised, and the acting is astounding and utterly believable. For a movie that contains teenagers shooting machine guns into a bleak lagoon in their underwear, it’s surprisingly unsettling. Three and three-quarter bulletproof vest initiations out of five.