Gomorrah (TV series)

Gomorra is a 2014 Italian television crime drama series. It is based on the book Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano, and on the film Gomorrah directed by Matteo Garrone, which won the 2008 Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.^[1]

Gomorrah is set in Naples, focusing on organised crime and the relationships of gangsters, drug dealers, and ordinary people. It offers a different style of mafia portrayal from previous series such as The Sopranos, or other Italian series like Il Capo dei Capi. Gomorrah is similar to The Wire in showing street-level crime and its hierarchical organisation from the pavement up to the office chair, and giving an audience a story about external and internal power struggles between criminals and delinquents. Described as "ugly in a good way,"^[2] the series is fast-paced, concentrating on cold emotive content for dramatic effect.

Starting from 6 May 2014, Gomorrah ran on Sky Italia with approximately 1.2 million viewers per episode.^[3] Beta Film sold the rights to screen the series in more than 30 countries.^[4]

Plot

The series begins with two camorra henchmen from the Savastano clan planning to kill a rival boss for Don Pietro Savastano (Fortunato Cerlino), who is the city's major crime boss and series protagonist. Attilio (Antonio Milo) and Ciro (Marco D'Amore) are ordered to drive to Salvatore Conte's (Marco Palvetti) mother's flat and scare him into ceasing all activities in the Savastano territory. Attilio and Ciro fill up a can of gasoline at a petrol station and use it to set the front door to the flat ablaze, trapping the family on the second floor. Ciro calls the emergency services shortly afterwards to ensure Conte isn't killed. Avoiding the deadly blaze, Conte saves himself and his mother, locking her away in the bathroom to give the emergency services enough time to rescue them. However, his desire for vengeance leads to a series of bloody and brutal murders of innocent bystanders and gangsters alike. Shortly after informing Savastano of the act, Ciro enters a bar to talk to a friend, but he is shot at by masked men armed with automatic weapons and grenades, who cause mass death and destruction. However, Ciro survives and heads back to Don Pietro.

The news of the attempt on Ciro's life gets back to Savastano. Already irked and tired of Conte's decision to muscle in on his territory, Savastano plots to find Conte and kill him, ordering his killers to get him. Amidst the chaos, he tries to keep his family life in order. Despite his bloodthirsty attitude, Savastano sits peacefully to eat dinner with his wife and son to discuss a new sofa, leaving the conversation to eat alone when it becomes argumentative. However, his psychotic behavior must be overstated, since he is capable of killing friend or foe in an instant. After Gennaro insults a small clan on a night out, Savastano kills the boss for asking Genny to clean the expletives he painted about the boss on a building wall. Similarly, when Savastano henchman Bolletta is suspected of informing the police of drugs entering the ports, Savastano kills him with his bare hands, using an ornament to mortally wound him before leaving him for dead and calling other members to burn the body.

The feud between Salvatore Conte and Pietro Savastano climaxes when Savastano sends Mafioso to kill Conte again. After getting intel about Conte's hiding place, Attilio, Ciro and other members storm a washing machine distribution outlet belonging to Conte. Again, Conte narrowly escapes, jumping out of a first floor office window and leaving thousands of euros behind in the ordeal. He flees to Spain, which is seen as a victory for the Savastano clan. Attilio is killed during a bloody shootout, leaving to Ciro lament his death and inform Attilio's wife that her husband will be unable to have a church funeral because he was a camorra member.

The son of Pietro, Gennaro, also known as Genny, does not participate in the attack considered as yet unprepared. He seems more interested in hanging out with his friends, Pietro says that his son is not ready to take control of the huge family empire, and gives Ciro the task of leading him in the right direction; then on the orders of Don Pietro, Genny is given a door to his 'initiation rite', in which he is to kill in cold blood a drug addict accompanied by Ciro, but Genny hesitates to shoot dead the addict, forcing Ciro to kill the addict. Following a police check, the boss Pietro is arrested and taken to jail, where he organizes a revolt against the commander of the prison. He is intercepted while ordering a homicide by phone and transferred to the 41 bis regime, in a much stricter prison where he is kept in solitary confinement without phone calls and can only receive visits from his immediate family. Control of the clan passes into the hands of Imma, the wife of Pietro, wary of Ciro and management capacity of Genny. Precisely for this reason and against Pietro's instructions, Imma orders Ciro to go to Spain to deal with the rival clan leader Conte (and aware that Conte is absolutely furious with Ciro, for having set fire to the house of his mother) and Genny to travel to Honduras with the dual purpose of dealing with drug traffickers and give voice to his imminent rise as heir of Don Pietro. After a long period in Honduras Genny returns to Naples, radically changed in both appearance and personality, this shown when he shoots a man dead over a minor insult and he is ready to take what belongs to him. Using his younger friends who he trusts more, Genny puts in place a series of political moves (including an electoral fraud to get a man of his elected as the new mayor of Giugliano in Campania), which causes the distrust of the old henchmen of Don Pietro, who he does not deem fit to manage the affairs of the clan.

Meanwhile, Ciro, feeling ignored and devalued by Genny, who used to be his pupil and close friend, intends to alter the internal equilibrium of the clan, and to break the truce that Ciro himself was able to achieve with the rival Conte clan, during his troubled trip in Spain. To do so Ciro hires Daniele, a naive young mechanic, to kill Tonino Russo, one of the most trusted and important lieutenants of Salvatore Conte, then he plans to kill Daniele to erase any suspicion. Daniele kills Russo not realizing he is an important figure in a Camorra clan, only finding out through news broadcast and that he was a pawn of Ciros. However he manages to avoid the trap set against him and hides in an abandoned building in the countryside. Daniele reveals the deception aimed against him to his brother Massimo, driver of Conte. Conte decides to return to Naples after the news of the death of Tonino. Meanwhile, Ciro, after failing to get information about Daniele's hiding place from his girlfriend, kills her by burning her in a car.

The emergence of Genny, has now changed the internal balance of the Savastano clan, there is an internal war between the two groups of Savastano, those of the 'old' and those of 'new'. The old, are being targeted by young people who considered them from the past and ready to prove that they are ready, killing Zecchinetta, one of the old, in his house, when they believed to be in business with the clan of Conte and in response, the old kill one of the young, Tonino Spiderman (nephew of a member of the old, 'O Pescivendolo, who reluctantly shoots his nephew while he is driving his scooter). Continuing with his duplicitous strategy, Ciro kills Imma, for whom he had constantly nurtured a deep hatred.

Imma had discovered a voice mail recording that Daniele’s girlfriend had left, that proves Ciro was behind the murder of Tonino Russo and that he was attempting to provoke a war between the Savastano and Conte clans. Genny discovers Ciro's game through a copy of the voice mail his mother had made and had prudently saved on a DVD inserted into one of her bags. Genny, not knowing who to trust, mustering the 'young' to dismantle the clan of the 'old', because he thinks that they are accomplices of Ciro. Therefore die 'O Baroncino, 'O Fringuello and 'O Pescivendolo, while Malammore, loyalist killer of Pietro, manages to escape an ambush organized under his house. Meanwhile Genny's men are aware of a stage show in which Ciros young daughter is participating, and believing Ciro will be in attendance Gennys young friends go to where the shows being held, but are ambushed and brutally slaughtered by the clan of Conte, with whom Ciro had concluded an alliance against Savastano. Genny, who had taken another route, thus escaping the ambush organized against him, he meets Ciro and his family during the show, and after having fired a shot towards Ciro, is himself shot by Ciro, who escapes with his family, leaving Genny on the ground mortally wounded. The series ends with the release of Don Pietro organized by men commanded by Malammore, from the van of the penitientary police with an organized attack. In the last scene Genny appears seriously injured and lying on the ground, but still able to show signs of life, as his hand barely moves.

Crew

• Directors: Stefano Sollima, Francesca Comencini, Claudio Cupellini
• Photography: Paolo Carnera, Michele D'Attanasio
• Editing: Patrizio Marone
• Music: Mokadelic
• Cinematography: Paki Meduri
• Production: Sky, Fandango, Cattleya, LA7, Beta Film

Cast

• Salvatore Esposito as Gennaro "Genny" Savastano, the son of the boss, manipulated by Ciro. He wants to take his father's place, but it is not up to the role.
• Marco D'Amore as Ciro Di Marzio, aka "L'immortale" (the immortal), the young and emerging gang boss's favorite. He is a friend and right hand man of Genny.
• Fortunato Cerlino as Pietro Savastano, the head of the Savastano clan.
• Maria Pia Calzone as Immacolata "Imma" Savastano, Pietro's wife, who she intends to succeed, not considering her son ready for that role.
• Fabio De Caro as Malammore, an old member of the clan Savastano, one of the men closest to Don Pietro.
• Massimiliano Rossi as Zecchinetta, an old member of the Savastano clan.
• Gaetano Di Vaio as 'O Baroncino
• Marco Palvetti as Salvatore Conte, leader of a rival clan to the Savastano.
• Ivan Boragine as Michele Casillo, new mayor of Giugliano in Campania
• Elena Starace as Noemi
• Antonio Milo as Attilio 'O Trovatello, an old member of the Savastano clan and a close friend of Ciro, who considers him almost as a father.

References

External links

• Official website (Italian)
• Gomorrah at the Internet Movie Database