Review: Gomorrah — Five Minutes of Action Crammed Into Two Hours

Watching Gomorrah is like learning Latin: You’d rather say you’ve done it than actually do it.

Gomorrah is a slightly fictionalized portrayal of life under the influence of the criminal organization Camorra (unknown to most of the U.S., but apparently running things with bloody fists in Italy). It’s a situation that deserves attention. A picture could have presented events as riveting entertainment or art, and perhaps helped to bring about change. Yet Gomorrah fails as art, entertainment and promotional tool. Any publicity about the horror of the Camorra has come from the existence of the film, not the watching.

Gomorrah is dull and flat and emotionally uncompelling: It is a sprawling tour of future-less lives and hollow days punctuated occasionally—very occasionally—by brief set pieces in which something violent and terrible happens. That may be true-to-life, but so is sitting at a desk all day, and neither is particularly interesting to watch. If filmmakers have any foundational obligation, it is to make a picture that makes you want–need–to keep watching. These filmmakers feel no such burden. It is as if they have taken the seriousness of their subject as license to relieve themselves of the obligation to sustain the interest of the audience. They’re counting on guilt or something to keep us interested, and they could not have been more mistaken. (more…)