DONT BELIEVE THE HYPE

Anyone that know me knows i watch and read anything to do with Italian crime. Its always been a huge interest of mine so much so that at one point i was gonna write a book (which i gave up on 'cos i realised theres too many good books out there already and i didnt think i could offer anything new to it) and spent months compiling stacks and stacks of research which i stored at the back of a wardrobe. One evening my door was very rudely kicked off its hinges and i was detained in the kitchen of my flat in cuffs for a few hours while they had a little search and then along with some other things brought all my 'research' thru and dumped it in front of me asking, 'well whats this then?'. As if this was the basis for some sort of international crime caper i was planning! All i could do was laugh and say, 'nah, i was gonna try writing a book'. They looked a little foolish at that point.

Anyway, when i heard about 'Gomorrah' i was hyped to say the least, especially knowing it was gonna deal with the Camorra rather than the Scilian Mafia. Pretty much every review i read bigged it up as some sort of masterpiece too so i'd been waiting anxiously for it to arrive and was pleased to see it showing at the Nova on Lygon.

Well, what a dissapointment! It just seemed to try far too hard and came across as way too disjointed. It followed 5 unrelated stories when i really think it would have been better off sticking to 2 or 3 and just didnt interest me. As the minutes ticked past i kept thinking 'nah, its been a bit slow so far, but it'll get better, it cant let me down', but then after i'd been sitting there for 90 minutes or so i just wanted it to end. I think a lot of other people felt the same as quite a few people bounced way before the end. I think it lost something in translation also as the Italians in the audience - of which there were a number - were laughing hard at some scenes that left me thinking, 'are they watching something else'.

There were definitely soome good scenes and characters - Marco and Ciro in particular - and i thought some of the locations really added some grime to it all, but overall it just didnt do it for me.