David and Goliath

Late one night, I heard an interview with Roberto Saviano, author of 'Gomorrah'. This Italian author was in hiding having written about his experiences with the Camorra - a mafia organisation in North Italy. Several years before, I had seen the best film Chazz Palminteri had ever starred in - FALCONE about an anti Mafia Judge working in Sicily.

At intervals, the papers show the state Naples is in, with rubbish piling high in the streets but nothing ever seemed to come of it and so the story 'went away'. Now this movie comes out following the publication of the book in 2006 and over the last few months, 60 mafiosi have been captured in Naples.

The film creates a world of its own with signs and sounds as foreign and intriguing as any distant place. You follow the lives of six characters, diving deep into the entrails of a vast public housing complex. The faces remind you of Roman statuary with their aquiline noses and strong profiles but there is little glory here.

The sound editor should get an Oscar for pointing us at the centre of things we need to notice and there's a not dud performance in it. More bad underwear but everything else is beautifully done. If such a topic can be exquisite, this is. I particularly liked one moral turning point when a mafiosi throws away an old ladies' gift of home grown peaches complaining of the 'smell'. We get a good, long look at the beautiful fresh fruit and the trouble the old lady took with the them.

To see a trailer of 'Gomorrah', click here: