Along with Godfather I and II, GoodFellas, City of God (and many episodes of The Sopranos), Gomorrah ranks among the few films that take the gangster world and turn it into high art.

The film is a profoundly moving study of the low-level soldati and ordinary community members affected by the Camorran Mafia. It convincingly integrates international political questions, environmental issues, subtly moving psychological studies of ordinary characters, horrific violence, philosophical issues of loyalty, values and honour, and above all a totally new (for the Mafia film) cinema verite style of shooting into a magnificent whole.

This film has GoodFellas' and the Godfathers' intelligent examinations of the eerie process whereby many small and justifiable decisions create horrific outcomes counter to what their protagonists want. It looks at how the work culture of the Mafia-- merely, as in GoodFellas, an offshoot of legitimate business-- destroys youth. It directs a few savage shots at the stupider movies in the gangster genre (Scarface). Its setting, an immense public housing complex, is a labyrinthine visual metaphor for the horrific modern interconnectedness of crime and ordinary life.

This is not a "fun" movie like GoodFellas, or a detailed psychological study of one man, like The Godfather or The Sopranos . These, however, are its virtues. The film is ultimately a vicious reminder that the roots of crime, evil and degradation are distressingly ordinary and neighbourly. Magnificent.