If, like me, you are going to see Gomorra without having read Roberto Saviano’s real-life account of the Neapolitan mafia, the Camorra, you will no doubt spend a great deal of your 2+ hours wondering what the hell is going on! As a gritty crime drama, the film is fantastic, as it interweaves stories of those living in and around a dilapidated block of flats and their attempts to simply survive the violent way of life which they are confronted with on a daily basis. The use of hand-held cameras lends an air of intense realism to the piece, to the point where at time you wonder if it is in fact a documentary and not a fiction film. This sense of realism is also aided by what, on the whole, is an exceptionally talented cast, who really make you care for these characters as they struggle with difficult choices in a world where they don’t have a lot of options. As an exposé of the Camorra itself, however, Gomorra does little to inform the viewer of the reasons behind the ‘warring’ which the characters engage in, or why, for instance, Don Chiro delivers money to various families in the neighbourhood. The corruption and violence of the lifestyle in this region is clear, but we are not helped to understand the reasons for this. The film is wrapped up with a series of inter titles which do help to fill in the gaps a little, but I couldn’t help but feel that these would have been far more useful had they come at the beginning of the film. If I can say one good thing about Gomorra, it is that it definitely made me think, but perhaps a little too much!
