“This sprawling, operatic, giddily violent quasi-documentary is a bona-fide masterpiece that observes Naples in the grip of the Camorra, the local mob, as a decaying beehive with danger round every corner. Not for the faint-hearted, otherwise a must.” — Peter Calder,
New Zealand Herald

Matteo Garrone’s white-hot exposé of the Neapolitan mafia excoriates gangster movie fantasies with jolting realism. One of the great films of 2008 returns after its brief spectacular appearance at the NZIFF in Auckland and Wellington, decked with European awards and international year’s-best citations.

“A piercing depiction of a swathe of Italian society in the choking grip of the Napoli Mafia, the Camorra, it is the only masterpiece on show [at Cannes where it went on to win the Grand Prix]. Director Matteo Garrone, working from the bestseller by Roberto Saviano, has created a modern classic that blends documentary inquiry with a thrilling crisscross of stories and characters all caught in the web of slavery and poverty spun by the Mafia. This isn’t a film about mythology and glamour in the way that American movies have festishised the mob, but a brutal confrontation between the thuggish morality and the Camorra’s skewed economic logic. In a simple pitch, it’s City of God meets The Godfather. There are plenty of nods to neo-realism, too – to Federico Fellini and Vittorio De Sica in particular – yet what makes it special is the director’s ability to balance his protagonists and storylines while drawing pity, shock and humour from the situation.

The housing estate where the film is set resembles a crumbling, decommissioned cruise liner; Garrone’s characters swarm about this hive of corruption, along its corridors, on its towers, at its gates. There’s the dapper retainer Don Ciro in his cream bomber jacket; the ten-year-old kid serving an apprenticeship as a decoy for assassinations; the Scarface-obsessed teenagers who find guns and think they can make it to the top alone; fat bosses and their ratty cohorts; the gifted tailor forced into a sweatshop life; the dying Don whose death-bed curse is aimed at ‘the euro, the euro’; the linen-clad fixer (Toni Servillo) organising disposal of toxic waste in a huge quarry, a metaphor for the poisons seeping deep into the earth, the culture.” — Jason Salomons, The Observer

“Moviegoers who aren’t afraid of the rough, real raw stuff in modern moviemaking should seek out Gomorrah’s bleak beauty and cruel clarity by any means necessary.” — James Rocchi, Cinematical

“The author of the book on which Gomorrah is based has been forced into hiding for fear of reprisal from the very mobsters he exposed. Their displeasure couldn’t pay this film a more chilling compliment.” — Anthony Quinn, The Independent