Based on Roberto Saviano's Italian non-fiction bestseller about the Neapolitan mob - the Camorra – director Matteo Garrone’s bleak, powerful crime movie travels from the horrifying slum projects of suburban Naples to corporate suites and the world of high-fashion ...finding them all poisoned by organized crime. Mob threats following the release of Saviano’s book have forced him to go into hiding under police guard.

Gomorrah closes with hard-hitting facts about the Camorra better placed at the beginning to throw perspective on the free-forming story of easy-come-easier-go life and death for citizens caught in Camorra catchment areas.

Clans forming the Camorra have carved up Naples and Caserta, killing 4,000 people in thirty years, more than any other criminal or terrorist group. Outside of arms and drug trafficking, they've become established in construction, textiles, and other legitimate ventures, and monopolise toxic waste dumping, cutting corners that have led to a 20% cancer jump in regions affected.

Needless to say, there is no honour among these thieves.

Garrone and five co-writers, including Saviano, split the story into five concurrent plots, dropping the audience into the middle of a mob hit in a tanning salon, leaving them to sink or swim.

A guide of sorts comes in the careworn, nervous shape of Don Ciro (Imparato), a bagman paying the families of imprisoned clan members, unable to handle the threat of death as the violence escalates.

The similarly middle-aged Pasquale, a tailor working for a clan subcontractor, discovers offering expert advice to a Chinese rival could be a fatal move, while university graduate Roberto (Paternoster) is offered a promising internship at mob boss Franco’s (Servillo) waste management business, and Toto (Abruzzese) is the next generation, thirteen years old and finding himself in too deep.

Skirting the perimeter, jacking the clans’ arms stashes and ripping off drug suppliers, are Marco and Ciro (Macor and Pettrone), born to lose punks with a Scarface obsession.

Basing the action around a massive, crumbling apartment block that houses the soldiers and servants (i.e. the poor, junkies, gamblers) who serve the Camorra bosses, Matteo’s detached, observational style and analytical pacing will jar with those expecting the adrenalin rush of City of God, but his unfussy documentary approach provides an authentic feeling expose of life where law and order run scared.

Sprawling and angry, Gomorrah’s small episodes form an ultimately overwhelming portrait of the clans’ invisible empire – from Toto’s initiation, taking a bullet while wearing a makeshift vest, and his coerced betrayal of a loved one, to Franco bullying a dying man into giving up more land for waste disposal, or Don Ciro begging an old friend, now enemy, for shelter.

Meanwhile, Pasquale sees Scarlett Johansson wearing one of his frocks at the Venice film festival, revealing how high up the food chain Camorra influence runs.

The violence is brief but shattering and two slayings, with Don Ciro and Toto caught in the middle, are amongst the most terrifying depictions of mob violence caught on camera.

Blame TV’s magisterial The Wire if Gomorrah seems superficial. But whereas TV has multiple episodes to penetrate the heart of its story, Matteo and co are to be commended for this all-encompassing overview of organised crime.

(BY ALI NADERZAD) A man steps inside a tanning bed and slips his hands into straps, facing us. He stands, naked, as the silver-blue lights behind him flicker and the machine whirs to life. Moments later, someone steps inside the booth and shoot him in the head. The opening scene of Gomorra, by italian director Matteo Garrone, is a memorable one. Clocking in at well over two hours, Gomorra casts a compelling glance about gangsters and their families living and plying their trade in an apartment building in Casal di Principe, a suburb of Naples which also happens to be the heart of the Italian camorra. The film was adapted from a book by Roberto Saviano which was a best-seller in Italy. Garrone follows the lives of five Neapolitans, from the kid who dreams of becoming an adult fast to the accountant for one of the families whose only desire is to stay alive and the two teenagers who believe they’re in the movie Scarface. You're never bored with Gomorra, even though Garrone doesn't quite let you get attached to any of the characters and it's probably justified. They're all going to die, eventually, so why get attached? Am I being too dramatic? As any neighborhood under siege, there are those who choose to stay out of criminal activities and those who partake freely in them. Turf wars, alliances and betrayals help punctuate Garrone's documentation of daily life amidst this ruined city block. But this is not a documentary, do not be fooled. It's a grand feature film in which man's dalliance with crime propel us towards a dramatic finish. And although the end of Gomorrha can be forecast easily, this highly watchable film is anything but predictable. It's also a character study asking us to look forgivingly, perhaps, at other men's unfortunate lot. The impossible turf wars which take place are entertaining although the adversaries here are unequal. In one scene so often replayed in movies of this genre, a long-time turf don dada hears news from his lieutenant about a couple of kids who stole from an arms cache. A meeting is convened and the boys' fate is decided with little opposition. Just like that. With this new film Matteo Garrone isn't reinventing the wheel but his Gomorrha shimmers with brio.