Gomorrah - Like The Wire (but without cops)

An anti-travelogue. You will not want to visit Naples. This movie, about the mafia in Naples, is really fast-paced, extremely violent, hard to stop watching, and hard to follow. It shows the broad reach of organized crime in Naples (maybe anywhere?) by following several stories along parallel paths: a war between rival gangs for control of a decrepit housing project, the initiation of a young boy into the gang, two cowboys who think that go out on their own within the gang-controlled projects, control of the fashion (tailoring) industry, disposal of hazardous waste. Each story is really compelling though at times it's hard to keep them straight as our intro to each of the main characters is quick and sketchy. This film does not reach out to you - you have to reach out to it. It has a documentary look and feel - lots of hand-held camera work, lots of dark lighting and awkward angles. But always fascinating to look at, some amazing and almost iconographic sequences (car crash in cemetery, two young thugs blasting bullets across a beach, the bag man pacing the long open walkways that crisscross the housing project, the Italian tailor entering the Asian dressmaking sweatshop where he will teach them the trade (they applaud him like a god). Gomorrah, a multiplot story, is like that fakeroo Crash - but this one's real and effective, not sentimental mush. It's like the Wire in some way, but as if the Wire were done entirely from the gang POV and almost entirely from within the tenements. Other than an occasional passing squad car that of course never stops, there is no police or law-enforcement presence at all in Gomorrah. It's a world unto itself.