Skip to main content

Gomorrah! [Foreign]

I've always been a sucker for mob movies, I'm not quite sure why. The best reason I can come up with was that I was exposed to it at a very young age, much like I was with horror, yet horror always trumped everything. There must be something with death that I was intrigued with. In horror you had the over-the-top almost cartoony like deaths while in mob movies you had more ruthless and deaths that were more directly to the point. I guess the realism made it frightening.
Gomorrah is that ruthless kind of a mob movie. The movie opens up with a scene at a tanning salon. We see a bunch of Italian men having a good time getting their tans. They are naked and in their most vulnerable state; a mistake in the mob world. It's not long before the whole gang gets executed. From the opening scene, you know shits going down. That pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the movie.

But Gomorrah gives us more than straight up violence. The movie tells us five intertwining stories from all corners of the mafia network. The movie seeks to give us a glimpse at the lifestyle in such a region. The focus of the stories range from teenagers to young adults to the veterans of the underground scene. I think of all the stories, I enjoyed the one of the two teenagers the best. Inspired by Tony Montana and Scarface, they seek to become a force to reckon with in their region, refusing to listen to or work under any mob; being vigilante's in their own district. From the get go, we know how it's going to end for them, but it's everything in between that draws the intrigue. Just what is their motivation? How did they get where they're at? Why are they firing machine guns in a lake only wearing their underwear?

Why? I don't know.

The movie draws a wide range of emotions from its viewers but they are rarely uplifting. At best we feel relieved when certain characters live, while at other times, we're terrified of the brutality exerted on civilians. It can be a tough watch, but the movie is unrelenting in its course.

Gomorrah was an Italian produced movie released in 2008. It was based on the book by the same name that detailed the real life crimes of an organized network called Camorra. Though the book was based on true accounts of the mob network, the movie tells fictionalized stories to reflect the true spirit of the crime ridden region.

I enjoyed the movie and thought it was quite powerful. Going in, I had no idea that they were based on true events but at the epilogue they tell us some startling facts about Camorra that is quite fascinating. It's worth the rent at the very least. Til next time, later geeks!

Labels:

Comments

j-yeezy said…
I thought it was alright. Not bad, but I kinda expected more. Don't know why..
May 5, 2010 at 11:43 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex

As part of my "campaign of cheapness", the past 3 months I've been going to the Indigo bookstore downtown about twice a week to read Chris Jericho's autobiography A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex . I'd park down for about 1.5 to 2 hours per visit and it took 3 months to do, but I finally finished it. Let it be known, that Jericho was my favourite wrestler from 1997 to 2002 (it only lasted this long because from 2002-07, I stopped watching/following wrestling completely). I learned of him during my junior high school years when me and my friends would watch WWF and WCW programming religiously. I knew there was something that stood out in Chris, it might have been his style of fighting, his comedic arrogance on the mic or his boyish good looks. Well whatever it was, I believed in him. My friends at the time were skeptical, but I would argue with them why he was so great. It was during his cruiserweight feud with Dean Malenko that really brought ou...
Post a Comment
Read more

The League of Denial (2013)

The topic of concussions in sports is a dialogue that’s been growing the past number of years.  Do a search on ‘concussions’ and ‘football’ and you’ll get several thousand hits on the controversy that’s surrounded the sport.  It’s a challenging topic as the research is all relatively new, and the topic itself challenges the mentality and philosophy adopted by football loving Americans.  Now, I’m not a fan of football or NFL but when I saw this book lying at the local bookstore, my interest was piqued.  Although I’m not a fan of football, those that know me know that I’m an unabashed fan of prowrestling.  Talks about concussions are also quite a hot topic even within the prowrestling sub-culture.  Earlier this year, one of the hottest wrestlers of the current era, Daniel Bryan, retired early at the age of 34 due to a history of concussion related issues.  Interestingly, he was not permitted to return to the ring due to the disapproval by WWE’s medic...
1 comment
Read more

MAX PAYNE was oh so PAYNEFUL!!!

What a failure this was. An EPIC FAILURE~! And I'll tell you why. This movie had everything going for it which was why it made the failure seem so huge. It had star power. It had a very competent director. The visual style was there. It had a simple storyline... a storyline that was basically fuck-proof because it's so basic. The effects (when there were any) were also pretty great. So where did they go wrong? Pacing. If the first two-thirds of the film was like the last third, I think it would have been a fine film. Not great by any means, but fine. I mean, there was hardly any action in the first hour. It was all talk and build up. Every 5 minutes I was saying to myself, "okay, something cool is gonna happen now". But it never came. I think had they added 2 or 3 big action sequences during that hour, that it would have helped the film breathe and flow better. I mean, didn't they realize that the source material was an action game? Max Payne is ba...
7 comments
Read more