Since its release, Gomorrah has won:

1. -Grand Prize of the Festival Award at Cannes
   

2. -Best Screenplay at Chicago International
   

3. -Best Film, Director, Screenwriter at European Film Awards
   

4. -Ari Zeiss Award at Munich Film Festival
   

...and been nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes, British Independent Film and BAFTA Awards.  Rottentomatoes gives the film a 90%, and critics rave the filmmaking is “stark and powerful,” “unforgettable,” and “fresh.”

So it must be brilliant, right - as these are some of the most prestigious awards in the world?  Wrong.  It is art for art’s sake, with no regard for the fact that film, as all art, must build a relationship with its viewer.  It is a headache to watch, and aside from a moment or two here and there (and some powerful facts before the end credits), completely un-relatable.  Between myself and the ten people sitting in my vicinity in the theater, people looked at their watch at least fifty times - some as soon as 20 minutes into the film!

This is a classic example of why majority audiences think critics are snobs, and why audiences turn to marketing rather than critics to make their viewing decisions. 

Perhaps all this praise is simply because Gomorrah is not The Godfather.  It is not handsome violent men whom you secretly love, sipping wine and kissing rings, a relentless devotion to family making their murders easily forgiven.  Gomorrah paints a portrait of mafia where no one is safe.  The only guiding principles here are power and profit.  These men inhabit slums, not villas with lush gardens.  And only one of the army is handsome or well-dressed.  These men are, simply put, thieves, thugs and murderers.  

Critics also seem to like the brutality of the film.  They seem to concur that the bleakness of this landscape is so hopeless that it will incite the unthinking masses into action.  But here’s the fundamental problem:  despite its cast of characters being so long you can’t follow who’s who for the first hour of the film, despite more characters being introduced in the late second and third acts of the film, despite a wealth of human scenarios ripe with empathy to draw from, there’s not a likable character in sight.  Not even for a fleeting moment - long enough to fall off an altar...

While I agree with the necessity of the film’s being made, and sympathize greatly with the inspiration that drove its making, a great film it is not.  Unrelenting, yes.  And that could have really worked for the film - really driven the story - if there had been even a momentary scrap or two  of humanity for an audience member to latch onto.  There is not.  There is only a constantly-moving camera, confusion, endless violence and despicable people.

Stories of pain and violence that exist in gritty underworlds can be some of the most powerful films there are.  City of God, Requiem for a Dream, and Slumdog Millionaire spring to mind - all great examples of films that use a gritty, relentless backdrop to increase awareness  about horrifying conditions that exist in the world.  But where those three films succeed that Gomorrah fails miserably is in that at their centers: humanity.  They have characters somewhere in the film who, even if only for an instant, are redeemable.  In that comes empathy, less glancing at watches and actual listening that will incite change in the hearts of the world-at-large.