There is nothing grand or operatic about Gomorrah and, as a result, it is poundingly powerful. It is heartless yet gripping, off-hand yet peculiarly intimate, and courageous in the way it presents itself.

We don't get to know the characters, exactly, but we experience something more interesting: we are brought into disconcerting, almost documentary proximity with the lives they lead and the worlds they inhabit.

Over the course of this sprawling mosaic about the world's most fearsome Mafia organization, the Neapolitan Camorra, [director] Garrone makes the business look like a beast of many tentacles, spreading misery and death to everyone it touches.

Here is a film whose presentation is about stripping away the sentimentalism and romanticism associated with gangsters, as well as the subgenre of movies that depict them.