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The problem about doing a film about organized crime in any era is that the template has been nearly totally set in stone, that it's almost impossible to escape it - The Godfather pretty much laid down the foundation for modern gangster films. And just about every film that followed is they rarely dared to move far enough away from the themes or archetypes that The Godfather laid down in stone.
Gomorrah changes this nearly entirely - it took second place at the Cannes film festival last year, which is pretty high praise. It takes a much less flattering look at the world of organized crime and takes the point of view of the commoners and the foot soldiers, rather than taking the more glamorous route of watching the generals that lead crime families, and shows how damaging organized crime is to society as a whole.
The film switches between characters involved in different situations, and you start to see how utterly ruthless crime families are when it comes to attaining their goals or taking power from another, and not in a typically Hollywood stylized violence kind of way. There are no goodfellas in these crews, just some very morally bankrupt people that have no problems exploiting children to make their ends meet, or inducting their newest members by shooting them at point blank range while the inductee wears a worn down kevlar vest as a right of passage. It's not a pretty sight, and a far cry from anything that Scorcesse or Coppola have shown in their examinations of how crime families work.
Gomorrah changes this nearly entirely - it took second place at the Cannes film festival last year, which is pretty high praise. It takes a much less flattering look at the world of organized crime and takes the point of view of the commoners and the foot soldiers, rather than taking the more glamorous route of watching the generals that lead crime families, and shows how damaging organized crime is to society as a whole.
The film switches between characters involved in different situations, and you start to see how utterly ruthless crime families are when it comes to attaining their goals or taking power from another, and not in a typically Hollywood stylized violence kind of way. There are no goodfellas in these crews, just some very morally bankrupt people that have no problems exploiting children to make their ends meet, or inducting their newest members by shooting them at point blank range while the inductee wears a worn down kevlar vest as a right of passage. It's not a pretty sight, and a far cry from anything that Scorcesse or Coppola have shown in their examinations of how crime families work.
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