Gomorrah
IFC Films | Release Date: February 13, 2009 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
87
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
28
Mixed:
1
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
The fingerprints of the Camorra are everywhere, this film wants us to know, and its grip is lethal. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterNatasha Senjanovic
Powerful, stripped to its very essence and featuring a spectacular cast (of mostly non-professionals), Matteo Garrone's sixth feature film Gomorra goes beyond Tarrantino's gratuitous violence and even Scorsese's Hollywood sensibility in depicting the everyday reality of organized crime's foot soldiers. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
Naples-born Servillo is a national star, famed as a theater, opera, and film director as well as an actor. And he's got the face of a mensch (or a Madoff) -- which makes his embodiment of criminal banality all the more identifiable, as well as horrifying. Read full review
100
TimeRichard Corliss and Mary Corliss
Probably the bleakest, least sentimental study of the Mafia in Italian or American film history. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Gomorrah looks grimy and sullen, and has no heroes, only victims. That is its power. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
The characters in Gomorrah may lack an extra dramatic dimension: Garrone errs, if anything, on the side of detachment. Yet that detachment is also the key to the film's success. There's so little hooey and melodramatic head-banging here. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
Both a staggering realist thriller and a jeremiad. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleWalter Addiego
This is a vision of hell conveyed in a simple, documentary style, far removed from the sumptuous American Mafia fables. Read full review
100
Washington PostJan Stuart
This vibrantly disorienting cinematic import reinvents the vocabulary of the crime drama with a painterly eye and a feverish documentary style. Read full review
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Jennie Punter
An unforgettable portrayal of the unglamorous gangster life, which is often short and never sweet. Read full review
100
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
For Americans, Gomorrah will play like every other Mafia epic - and no other Mafia epic. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
Gomorrah takes place in a world where decency can't take root and we can only watch in horror as crime overwhelms society's most vulnerable-- women, children, law-abiding citizens, and the conscientious few who want to get out of the game. Read full review
90
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
This film never feels like copycat Americana to me. Its vision of the bleak, ruined, urban-cum-rural landscape of Naples and environs is distinctively European and postmodern, redolent of the spiritual and physical desolation Antonioni captured so memorably in "Red Desert." Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
Part of what's bracing about Gomorrah, and makes it feel different from so many American crime movies, is both its deadly serious take on violence and its global understanding of how far and wide the mob's tentacles reach, from high fashion to the very dirt. Read full review
90
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
The result demands a patient viewing, and maybe more than one; only after a second dose did I get the measure of Garrone's mastery, and realize how far he has surpassed, not merely honored, the author's courageous toil. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
This isn't some pomo arthouse picture looking to score points by subverting the gangster paradigm; it's a killer film about killers who idolize film but are unable or unwilling to parse the doom that always crops up come Act III. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
So fasten your seat belts for Gomorrah, just snubbed in the wussy Oscar race for Best Foreign Film (so you know it's dynamite). Read full review
88
New York PostV.A. Musetto
The film's disclosure that Camorra money is involved with the reconstruction of New York City's Ground Zero will give viewers something to think about. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
A frightening portrait of corruption, cynicism, intimidation, greed and violence, Gomorrah is tough stuff. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
The sense of inescapability, the mood of capitulation and resignation, becomes the story. What is being made clear is the thoroughgoing rot of a civilization; there is literally no place to find peace, solace or consolation. Read full review
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Garrone's messy storytelling compounds an already messy history. He's a powerful filmmaker, though, and a fearless one. Read full review
80
EmpireDamon Wise
A sombre, slow, but well-paced study of organised crime in urban Naples that leaves a very grim taste in the mouth. Read full review
80
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
The five interwoven narratives in this visceral but disciplined and beautifully acted movie show to devastating effect how ordinary men and women -- and especially vulnerable boys desperate for masculine role models -- get caught up in the seductive violence and are ruthlessly destroyed by the network's hardened henchmen. Read full review
80
VarietyJay Weissberg
Utilizing a mesmerizing documentary style that studiously avoids glamorizing the horrors, Garrone cherrypicks episodes from Saviano's muckraking tract, building to a chillingly matter-of-fact crescendo of violence, though interwoven tales tend to dissipate the full force of the criminal Camorra families' insidious control. Read full review
80
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
This corrosive, slapdash, grimly exciting exposé of organized crime in and around Naples comes on like "Mean Streets" cubed. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
The malignity can be oppressive -- this is a far cry from Fellini finding poignant uplift in the slums -- but the dramatic structure is complex, the details are instructive, and the sense of tragedy is momentous. Read full review
75
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
It's all about waste and destruction, and not just the toxic waste -- illegally dumped in landfills -- that is poisoning the farmland and the aquifers in the region. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
Given the breadth of the story, the characters never achieve much depth, but they're part of a larger pattern: the younger ones are eager to find their way into the organization while the older ones are desperate to find their way out Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
Gomorrah isn't memorable. The structure feels random, and the characters remain at arm's length. Next to HBO's "The Wire," which depicted an enormous financial ladder and also brought to life the characters on every rung, the movie is small potatoes: excellent journalism, so-so art. Read full review
20
Film ThreatPete Vonder Haar
Clearly, Gomorrah is supposed to represent the best of today’s European cinema...and if this is the best, I would hate to imagine the worst! Gomorrah is a boring mess focusing on how the mob in today’s Naples has its tentacles stretched far and wide Read full review
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