Word: camorra
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Simone and Roberto have been friends forever, but now they belong to opposing factions in the Camorra Mob. "I'm telling you," one warns the other, "if you don't change sides, we might kill you. Or you might kill us. Because we're at war. People are dying every day." The mortal rivals give each other a final farewell kiss on the cheek; they're boys of about...
...Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah, called Gomorra in Italy and based on the best-selling exposé by Roberto Saviano, is probably the bleakest, least sentimental study of the Mafia in Italian or American film history. In its depiction of the Camorra crime family, there are no good guys, no crusading cops, no mama pleading with her son to stay out of the rackets. There's also no Mr. Big, Dr. No or Don Corleone stroking a house cat and intoning gritty or pearly aphorisms. The movie stays at street level, showing the lower- and middle-rung employees enmeshed...
...malefactors includes a 13-year-old boy who is shot point-blank while wearing a bulletproof vest during an initiation rite that is like a Mafia bar mitzvah ("Now you are a man"); a middle-management toughie who, like Tony Soprano, is in the waste-disposal business (the Camorra holds a monopoly in this industry); and two punks who quote the Pacino Scarface and think they've hit the jackpot when they stumble on a weapons stash. ("Let's rack up corpses," one says. "No use feeling depressed.") Above these scarred, drugged-out creatures are their bosses, wealthy mobsters...
...This particular slice of territory has gotten more attention over the past year than any of the locals - good guys and bad - might have wanted. Last spring's images of garbage covering entire blocks and neighborhoods in revolt were beamed around the world. News reports blamed the Camorra crime syndicate, government mismanagement, faraway profiteers and ingrained local apathy for the troubled coastal city's worst-ever waste-removal crisis. The broader implication was that the modern consumer lifestyle is a ticking environmental time bomb. Watching the drama unfold on TV in Beijing, Liu saw the makings...
...style of this long, solidly acted film is no more than efficient. What sticks in the mind is the numbing information imparted: that the Camorra is a gangster empire that earned 150 billion Euros just last year; that in addition to dealing in drugs and arms it invests in legitimate businesses around the world, including the reconstruction of the World Trade Center; that in the past three decades the Camorra has murdered more people than al Qaeda. It is these statistics, rather than the movie's ordinary craft, that hold the real power and horror of Gomorrah...