Henry Saw: Gomorrah

Over-rated.


This won't be the longest of reviews because I honestly don't have much to say about this film. The reason I don't have much to say is that this is one of the most confusing, challenging, uninviting, films I've ever seen. Just a total let-down.

So I'd read a lot of great things about this movie. It won Europe's version of the Best Picture award. The pretentious and stupefying New York Times critics (A.O. Scott and the other one) said it was better than The Godfather (basically). Joe Morgenstern from the Wall Street Journal, my second highest rated critic, loved it. Roger Ebert, who is the best critic alive, gave Gomorrah four stars (the highest rating he can give...of course he just gave "Watchmen" and "Knowing" four stars...he might be losing it a bit). Anyway, all these critics, be they good or bad, are dead ****ing wrong.

Gomorrah is just unpenetrable. It just refuses to let the audience in. I'll allow the caveat that in it's original language, a dirty form of Italian, it might make more sense. But the subtitled version I saw was just totally unwelcoming and muddled.

Gomorrah is basically an Italian 'Traffic', just with the Naples' Mafia replacing drugs. It looks at how the Mob runs and controls everything in the area through five different plot lines. I was sort of able to follow 3 of them. The most interesting of which involves a 12ish year old boy who is sucked into the life style. He is probably the best actor in the film, and the camera work in these parts, that mostly follow his reactions to things around him, peaks.

The other two I was able to sorta/kinda able to make sense of involved two 20-somethings who are obsessed with Tony Montana and are trying to make a name for themselves. Most promo shots for the film show these two characters, shooting guns they find...somehow...near a lake or something. Their plotline is not that compelling and very easy to predict.

The last plotline I got involved a tailor who the mob is trying to rope in...or something...who is trying to resist their influence. His was perhaps the most interesting story to tell, and could have carried a whole movie had the filmmakers been smart enough to focus this film on something.

What we get instead is a maddening, boring wreck. YES, it offers an interesting look into the Italian Mafia. YES, it de-romanticizes the life of crime these people live; debunking the myth that Goodfellas and The Sopranos like to propagate. YES, it's cool to see movies in another language, from another culture, about an alien area. All these things are true...but good lord does this movie just not work for me.

If you trust those other critics...see the movie. Let me know what you think. Maybe I'm wrong (along with the other seven people I saw it with who also didn't care for it). Let me know. But my recommendation? Skip it.

Grade: C-

Best Scene: The opening scene in the tanning beds