This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 26, 2009 - In one of the best-remembered episodes in the hit television series that bore his family's name, Tony Soprano took his daughter, the delightfully named Meadow, on a tour of prospective colleges in upper New England. Dad and daughter bonded, and, as happened so often with the skillfully rendered series, we couldn't help but sort of like Tony, the family man, even as we knew that he was also a ruthless crime boss.
Then, in Maine, Tony spotted a fellow who had gone into hiding after betraying the organization. After making sure his darling little girl was tucked away in her tidy motel cabin, Tony found the rat and strangled him to death with piano wire. You could almost hear David Chase, the creator of "The Sopranos," saying "Gotcha!"
There are no Gotchas in "Gomorrah," a relentlessly realistic Italian movie about the Camorra - the gangsters who dominate and defile much of life in Naples and other parts of southern Italy. The gangsters in the movie have embarked on a seemingly meaningless and seemingly endless war with other gangsters, a war in which friends can become enemies in the snap of a boss' fingers. The only relatively sympathetic characters are the victims, people who end up either dead or doomed.
"Gomorrah" is not an American gangster movie, with some mob bosses who have at least some decent qualities; it is tour of an urban hell presided over by evil men. Once you get the five separate, sometimes interrelated story lines sorted out, it is a compelling and frightening portrait of what happens when the justice system breaks down and society is controlled by thugs and criminals.
I'll leave it up to the viewer to think of examples closer to home, but I might mention that the Camorra and other Italian mafias - their members number in the tens of thousands -- are deeply invested in the American and European economic system, invested to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
The film begins with a memorable fade in, from black to a kind of medicinal, spotlit blue. From that blue haze a face slowly emerges, and things begin happening very fast, in a handheld blur of angry or frightened faces and dreadful acts. With five narratives going on at once and transitions coming without preface, it is helpful to have a cast of characters before seeing the movie. Here's one:
Pale, fretful Don Ciro. Dressed like an accountant, he is "il sottomarino" - "the submarine." His job is to deliver regular stipends to the families of imprisoned Camorra members, but when warfare breaks out between clans of gangsters, he finds himself caught in the middle, an extremely dangerous place to be.
Toto, 13 years old, more innocent than he realizes. He has grown up in the world of the Camorra and, beginning as an errand boy, he finds himself slowly drawn into the bloody warfare that surrounds him.
Marco and Ciro, wild young men whose role model is Tony Montana, the Cuban gangster of the movie "Scarface." But life is not a movie, at least not that movie. Marco and Ciro are stupid and willful, pulling stickups on the drunken spur of the moment and taking delight in firing automatic weapons into the air as if they were toys. They are out of control. The main question is whether they will be used by the Camorra, or exterminated by it.
Roberto is a college graduate who goes to work in the waste management business, only to discover that he is planting the earth with poison by the ton. Roberto has to choose between morality and a lucrative business.
Pasquale is a tailor who works for a mobbed-up clothing firm but steps into dangerous territory when he begins working secretly at night for a Chinese sweatshop.
The movie, which was directed by Matteo Garrone and based on an expose by Robert Saviano, never loses its initial energy, but in the last 20 minutes or so it gathers even more passion and we are swept along with the story to an ending that seems inevitable. "Gomorrah" never engages in wishful thinking: These gangster are bad and dangerous men armed with guns and money, and their acts threaten the fabric of civilized society.
Opens March 27
Sunshine Cleaning
The concept - two broke sisters start a business cleaning up crime scenes - is probably the weirdest thing about "Sunshine Cleaning," a rather cheerful tale of sibling bonding with two talented and, let's face it, adorable actresses in the lead roles. Amy Adams plays a single mother, Rose. Emily Blunt, who seems to be in everything these days, plays Rose's sister, Norah. Norah still lives at home with their father (Alan Arkin), a failed entrepreneur who keeps coming up with get-rich-quick schemes that fail.
The movie, directed by Christine Jeffs ("Sylvia"), is a small, pleasant independent diversion that would not withstand deep analysis but does not really demand it. Adams and Blunt are terrific as the semi-estranged sisters who come to know and love each other again through cleaning up other people's tragic messes, and the movie is filled with believable small town people, the kind of people who may not even notice that we are in a recession because they are used to living in hard times.
Opens March 27
Harper Barnes, the author of Never Been A Time: The 1917 Race Riot That Sparked The Civil Rights Movement, has also been a long-time reviewer of movies.