Jason KingGomorrah ($9-)
May 3rd 2009 02:01
Category: No Category
Gomorrah ($9-)
Described by some as the best mafia film to come out of Italy. To me - it was boring as hell and lost my interest after 45mins. Looking at watches while viewing films is a bad sign - even worse is realising you have been there less than an hour.
The movie opens with the shootings of some gangsters whilst relaxing in a tanning salon. I thoroughly enjoyed the opening - it's all shot with blue lights of the tanning salon and is extremely stylised. It was leading me into a film that said action, blood and violence - but this is never explained to have a purpose throughout the film, or at least one that had bearing on the film as a whole. The film does hold a lot of action, blood and violence but for someone that has grown up mainly on Hollywood films this is too slow to the punch and too docco than a great story to follow. I will probably get shot down for this review as on Rotten Tomatoes it has a review score of 100%.
The movie then intertwines five separate stories of Italians whose lives are touched by organized crime.
All in blue contains spoilers:
Don Ciro (Gianfelice Imparato) is a timid middleman, who distributes money to the families of imprisoned clan members. When making a delivery, he is ambushed by two angry clan members with an obvious grudge against their fellows; there is a feud within the clan. Wanting to save his own skin, he later offers to defect to their side. They explain to him their families were murdered by the clan and want retribution, and that they have no need for a money-carrier. Instead, Ciro leads them to the location where he is given the money for distribution. The pair raid the place, killing everyone but Ciro, and take the money. Ciro quietly walks off to an uncertain future.
Totò (Nicolo Manta) is a 13-year-old grocery delivery boy who observes some drug dealers ditching some drugs and a gun when running from the police. He returns the items to the gang, who take him in. His initiation involves him being shot whilst wearing a bulletproof vest, as a test of courage. Soon after he is accepted into the gang, families in the neighborhood that are perceived to be disloyal receive a warning to move out or suffer violence; Toto's fellow gang members received similar threats. Later, whilst hanging out with his gang in the streets, one of his gang is killed in a drive-by. The gang decides to stand their ground and exact violent retribution by selecting a woman, Maria, as their next victim, because her son Simone has joined a secessionist gang. Toto, who was friends with Simone and who has delivered groceries to Maria, is forced to lure her out of her apartment, where his comrades gun her down.
Roberto (Carmine Paternoster) is a graduate who works in toxic waste management. His boss Franco (Toni Servillo) illegally dumps the waste in disused mines. During an operation, a drum of toxic chemicals is accidentally spilled on a driver. Franco refuses to call an ambulance, and when the workers refuse to handle the waste, Franco instead hires children to drive the trucks. When Franco decides to increase his illegal dumping, Roberto can no longer contain his disgust and quits.
Pasquale (Salvatore Cantalupo) is a haute couture tailor who takes a night-job training Chinese garment workers. Because they are competing with Camorra-controlled firms, the Chinese drive him to and from work in the trunk of their car. His secret work is discovered nonetheless, and on a ride home two gunmen on a scooter open fire on the car. He survives and leaves town, taking a job as a truck driver. At a truck stop, he sees Scarlett Johansson on TV wearing one of his dresses.
Marco (Marco Macor) and Ciro (Ciro Petrone) are two cocky wannabe gangsters who spy Camorra gangsters hiding a stash of weapons. They steal the weapons and amuse themselves by firing off rounds by the riverbank. One day, out of money, they use their guns to rob a video arcade. They spend their money at a strip club, where the angry gangsters find them and threaten to kill them if they don't return the weapons within a day. The pair prove stubborn, so one of the gangsters tries a different tactic: he approaches them in a bar with an offer of €10,000 if they return the weapons and conduct a murder. They accept the offer, which turns out to be a trap, as they are ambushed and killed at the location of their supposed target.
It is probably 20 or 30 minutes before director Matteo Garrone comes back to the same character twice. That fails to draw us in very deeply at first, because we can’t tell whether we should become attached to anyone. Some reviews I have read describe this as the winner of the film as Garrone is trying to portray an entire region as a character — not just an individual — so it takes 20 or 30 minutes to make the introduction. To me this is what failed - I wanted to bond with someone, to feel a connection, to become that person's ally and share their emotional burden throughout. It is terribly sad when you realise this is loosely based on real life events and Garrone adopts a documentary style that is completely detatched, in my opinion too detatched - it either should have been docco or story. I think it is this uniqueness that has made the film so award succesful - it is different and innovative but to me the reason of its failure. The story written by Roberto Saviano is so real and accurate that he has received so many death threats from the Camorra for exposing their activities in the novel and movie, and is now permanently under police protection.
I found myself bonding with Toto, the 13yr old grocery delivery boy as he is stuck in his youth with a closed exit from the world. His choices were so limited that if he chose the right one then he was dead - this was the saddest part for me. I also tried to bond with Marco and Ciro - but they are just idiots high on drugs and the gangster films they have seen - they do an exceptional Scarface scene. The others I all felt for but they were all in hell and the caring person in me will always feel for the child. Can people not make the choice to leave hell if they so choose?
One thing that my freind Mikael pointed out after we left the screening was the fact that at the end of the film they put follow ups on the screen explaining how it is the largest money turn over in the drug world and there is such a huge gap created by the rich drug gangsters and the poor members of the public left to hell but never once during the film do we see the comparison to the rich drug lords. Could one of the characters be the extremely wealthy businessman making squillions at these people's expense - surey this could have put more emotion into the film and given us someone to hate. As the film stands it is hard to feel for anyone as they all are going to hell.
One thing this film deserves full marks for is the editing, acting and cinematography - it is in a league of its own for the cinematography. Lots of different settings to match all the characters but apart from the opening the film has a tone of grey and brown to make everything look depressing. There is also the docco feel of very limited closeups that keep you at a distance and the editing of sad people in the area who aren't lead actors does portray the effect it has on the entire community and not just the leads. The actors themselves are some professional actors and some with limited experience and all of them hold their own of what I consider deserved equal billing.
To me this film was too many characters and while a great docco styled film I got more out of City of God and Tropa De Elite. It starts on the 14th of May in art house cinemas. Worth $9-.
Described by some as the best mafia film to come out of Italy. To me - it was boring as hell and lost my interest after 45mins. Looking at watches while viewing films is a bad sign - even worse is realising you have been there less than an hour.
The movie opens with the shootings of some gangsters whilst relaxing in a tanning salon. I thoroughly enjoyed the opening - it's all shot with blue lights of the tanning salon and is extremely stylised. It was leading me into a film that said action, blood and violence - but this is never explained to have a purpose throughout the film, or at least one that had bearing on the film as a whole. The film does hold a lot of action, blood and violence but for someone that has grown up mainly on Hollywood films this is too slow to the punch and too docco than a great story to follow. I will probably get shot down for this review as on Rotten Tomatoes it has a review score of 100%.
The movie then intertwines five separate stories of Italians whose lives are touched by organized crime.
All in blue contains spoilers:
Don Ciro (Gianfelice Imparato) is a timid middleman, who distributes money to the families of imprisoned clan members. When making a delivery, he is ambushed by two angry clan members with an obvious grudge against their fellows; there is a feud within the clan. Wanting to save his own skin, he later offers to defect to their side. They explain to him their families were murdered by the clan and want retribution, and that they have no need for a money-carrier. Instead, Ciro leads them to the location where he is given the money for distribution. The pair raid the place, killing everyone but Ciro, and take the money. Ciro quietly walks off to an uncertain future.
Totò (Nicolo Manta) is a 13-year-old grocery delivery boy who observes some drug dealers ditching some drugs and a gun when running from the police. He returns the items to the gang, who take him in. His initiation involves him being shot whilst wearing a bulletproof vest, as a test of courage. Soon after he is accepted into the gang, families in the neighborhood that are perceived to be disloyal receive a warning to move out or suffer violence; Toto's fellow gang members received similar threats. Later, whilst hanging out with his gang in the streets, one of his gang is killed in a drive-by. The gang decides to stand their ground and exact violent retribution by selecting a woman, Maria, as their next victim, because her son Simone has joined a secessionist gang. Toto, who was friends with Simone and who has delivered groceries to Maria, is forced to lure her out of her apartment, where his comrades gun her down.
Roberto (Carmine Paternoster) is a graduate who works in toxic waste management. His boss Franco (Toni Servillo) illegally dumps the waste in disused mines. During an operation, a drum of toxic chemicals is accidentally spilled on a driver. Franco refuses to call an ambulance, and when the workers refuse to handle the waste, Franco instead hires children to drive the trucks. When Franco decides to increase his illegal dumping, Roberto can no longer contain his disgust and quits.
Pasquale (Salvatore Cantalupo) is a haute couture tailor who takes a night-job training Chinese garment workers. Because they are competing with Camorra-controlled firms, the Chinese drive him to and from work in the trunk of their car. His secret work is discovered nonetheless, and on a ride home two gunmen on a scooter open fire on the car. He survives and leaves town, taking a job as a truck driver. At a truck stop, he sees Scarlett Johansson on TV wearing one of his dresses.
Marco (Marco Macor) and Ciro (Ciro Petrone) are two cocky wannabe gangsters who spy Camorra gangsters hiding a stash of weapons. They steal the weapons and amuse themselves by firing off rounds by the riverbank. One day, out of money, they use their guns to rob a video arcade. They spend their money at a strip club, where the angry gangsters find them and threaten to kill them if they don't return the weapons within a day. The pair prove stubborn, so one of the gangsters tries a different tactic: he approaches them in a bar with an offer of €10,000 if they return the weapons and conduct a murder. They accept the offer, which turns out to be a trap, as they are ambushed and killed at the location of their supposed target.
It is probably 20 or 30 minutes before director Matteo Garrone comes back to the same character twice. That fails to draw us in very deeply at first, because we can’t tell whether we should become attached to anyone. Some reviews I have read describe this as the winner of the film as Garrone is trying to portray an entire region as a character — not just an individual — so it takes 20 or 30 minutes to make the introduction. To me this is what failed - I wanted to bond with someone, to feel a connection, to become that person's ally and share their emotional burden throughout. It is terribly sad when you realise this is loosely based on real life events and Garrone adopts a documentary style that is completely detatched, in my opinion too detatched - it either should have been docco or story. I think it is this uniqueness that has made the film so award succesful - it is different and innovative but to me the reason of its failure. The story written by Roberto Saviano is so real and accurate that he has received so many death threats from the Camorra for exposing their activities in the novel and movie, and is now permanently under police protection.
I found myself bonding with Toto, the 13yr old grocery delivery boy as he is stuck in his youth with a closed exit from the world. His choices were so limited that if he chose the right one then he was dead - this was the saddest part for me. I also tried to bond with Marco and Ciro - but they are just idiots high on drugs and the gangster films they have seen - they do an exceptional Scarface scene. The others I all felt for but they were all in hell and the caring person in me will always feel for the child. Can people not make the choice to leave hell if they so choose?
One thing that my freind Mikael pointed out after we left the screening was the fact that at the end of the film they put follow ups on the screen explaining how it is the largest money turn over in the drug world and there is such a huge gap created by the rich drug gangsters and the poor members of the public left to hell but never once during the film do we see the comparison to the rich drug lords. Could one of the characters be the extremely wealthy businessman making squillions at these people's expense - surey this could have put more emotion into the film and given us someone to hate. As the film stands it is hard to feel for anyone as they all are going to hell.
One thing this film deserves full marks for is the editing, acting and cinematography - it is in a league of its own for the cinematography. Lots of different settings to match all the characters but apart from the opening the film has a tone of grey and brown to make everything look depressing. There is also the docco feel of very limited closeups that keep you at a distance and the editing of sad people in the area who aren't lead actors does portray the effect it has on the entire community and not just the leads. The actors themselves are some professional actors and some with limited experience and all of them hold their own of what I consider deserved equal billing.
To me this film was too many characters and while a great docco styled film I got more out of City of God and Tropa De Elite. It starts on the 14th of May in art house cinemas. Worth $9-.
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Comment by Janet Collins
Acceptable Etiquette
The Social Critic
Janet Collins Blog
Probably the reason this seems to be shot in a sort of documentary style is that it really is something of a documentary.
I wrote about Roberto Saviani, writer of the book back in January. A lot (if not all) of the story is fact, not fiction and there has been a lot written about him and the book because it sent him into hiding.
I'd like to see it anyway but given your review I will probably wait for the DVD.
Comment by Michelle Sweeney
Competition Queen
Comment by Jason King
Sydney Table
Salty Popcorn
Total Randomness
Yay Michelle - to be honest I was expecting some kind of crucification for not liking it. Normally I love arthouse films but this one dragged on and on and lost its direction. Glad I am not alone.
Thanks for the comments ladies.
Comment by Morgan Bell
Deep Pencil
Business News
Movie Train
Comment by Jason King
Sydney Table
Salty Popcorn
Total Randomness
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
This one has me really excited, the images alone are so rich..thanks for the blue section so I didn't read any spoilers.
You are actually the first negative review I've read for the film, but that's testament to your honesty..still the fervor excitement with which friends have recommended the film to me means my eagerness is not quashed...plus you and I have vastly different tastes though I agree City of God and Tropa De Elite are masterpieces.
Comment by Jason King
Sydney Table
Salty Popcorn
Total Randomness
Like I said though - it is some of the best cinematography I have seen fora long time but the plot was so frustrating.
I really look forward to reading your review when you have seen it.
No worries on the blue - they were some major spoilers and it would piss me off to find out.
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Comment by ShaunK
Screen Adventure
Glad to see I wasn't the only person who didnt like it, did you also have trouble following what the hell was going on??
Comment by Jason King
Sydney Table
Salty Popcorn
Total Randomness
I remember this film had so much hype about being the next uber cool thing to watch, My problem was that I could not for the life of me find a clue as to why or how. Was not a fan and yes, I did get a bit confused with the plot but just put that down to being a foreign film.
I think JD may have wrote a review on this one also.
If you haven't seen City of God and Tropa De Elite add them to the top of your must see list - will suss out your review after I get out watching The Runaways in a couple of hours.