This film follows five lives knotted up in the power-dynamics and
displays of power put on by the Camorra, the mafia in contemporary
Naples. As with Traffic, The Departed (Martin Scorcese
executive produced Gomorrah) and City of God, the
individual stories range from the little guy to the big players. The
lives of the main characters differ in detail (what they do for a
living), they together become walking-talking reminders that
retribution and justice are meted out unevenly, unfairly; a worn-out
theme, especially in gang films. Consequently, viewers retain visual
elements, such as the aged high-rise apartment blocks, the humid light,
the cameras’ darting-eye movement (cutting away just as the bullet
shatters the skull and the blood spatter begins its outward journey) as
the factions go to war. Those are flashes, instants, of memory, but
they fade in time.
This article appears in Aug 20-26, 2009.
