Until you see this film, you might assume that the Camorra was a European football team, or maybe a brand of Italian sausage. Thanks to the Italian director Matteo Garrone (The Embalmer), you soon realise that it is a criminal organisation based in Naples. Though not as internationally famous as the mafia, it is more deadly. The investigative journalist Roberto Saviano, on whose book this film is based, claims the group has killed more people than any other criminal organisation or terrorist group.

Could it be that Garrone’s focus on the relatively unknown— at least outside of Italy — Camorra reflects a growing weariness with tales of the mafia?

I mean, after Scorsese and The Sopranos, where can the traditional mafia movie go, other than into endless repeats? So, as they say in the world of fashion journalism, is the Camorra the new mafia?

I doubt it. Judging from Gomorra, the Camorra is a kind of mafia without the mythology, the codes of honour, the family loyalties or even the sharp suits. This bunch are mere brutes and butchers whose power rests on bullets. (Garrone’s film, though full of executions, never shows the really nasty stuff in Saviano’s book.) Gomorra offers none of the clever hits or Machiavellian power moves you find in mafia films. As a consequence, the characters aren’t fascinating in their own right or as part of a mysterious tribe. We don’t experience the frisson of moral ambiguity that comes when we secretly admire men who, like Tony Soprano, we know to be bad.

The title suggests a depiction of human depravity on a biblical scale. Yet, though the Camorra’s reach is wide and its profits are high, what we get here is a small slice of a criminal world shot in true cinema vérité style. It looks grimy and grubby. Where is the grandeur that comes with great wealth and power? The film is full of run-down housing estates and shabby men engaged in banal acts of murder. Even the top bosses dress and live like the underclass.

Gomorra is one of those multi-narrative films that explore the very different lives of the characters. There’s 13-year-old Toto(Salvatore Abruzzese), who goes from delivering groceries for his mum to working as a drug-runner for the mob. Don Ciro (Gianfelice Imparato) is the dapper mobster who provides the families of mob prisoners with payoffs, while Pasquale (Salvatore Cantalupo) is the gifted tailor who turns on his mob employees. Best of all are Marco and Ciro (Marco Macor, Ciro Petrone), two young loose cannons who will rip off anyone for kicks, including the Camorra.

The film invites comparison with City of God, the Brazilian film from 2002, but it has none of the raw vitality, engaging characters or dramatic drive necessary to hold our interest. This is partly because it is rooted in realism — at times, it’s hard to know whether you are watching real people or professional actors. (All are remarkably convincing.) Gomorra struts its hard-boiled realism with pride, glad not to be offering the usual Hollywood fare of gangster romanticism. Whereas Savanio’s book was a personal and angry exposé of the Camorra, Garrone has gone for a more neutral, fly-on-the-wall approach.

Here, though, is a fly with a moral conscience, for Gomorra is not structured as gangster-based entertainment, but as an exposé of a serious social problem — the extensive corruption of the mob and its impact on the lives of the people around it. Garrone shows us how mob influence extends beyond the familiar world of drugs and weapons, seeping into the world of high fashion and celebrity. In one story line, the mob is responsible for the pollution that comes from the illegal dumping of toxic waste.

Garrone wants to portray a society where criminality is not an aberration, but the norm. That’s fine, but, in the end, it’s hard to know what the audience is meant to feel. For the film seems to be making the rather obvious point that the Camorra are a brutal bunch who are bad for society. Well, I never! We aren’t left with a sense of outrage or anger at their activities, so we end up with just another mob movie that tries — and fails — to entertain us.

15, 137 mins

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