Get out your black lace hankies: The award-winning, Scorsese-endorsed Italian film Gomorra has been released in the US. Director Matteo Garrone’s portrayal of the infamous Napolitano criminal gang Camorra is due for wide release in January, but due to respectable aims for certain Academy Awards, its limited release has been pushed to this year. Most would chalk this up to Garrone’s hunger for more cinematographic recognition or future fame and wealth, but Gomorra is no ordinary audience-pleasing flick. It consciously deters itself away from the glamour of its predecessors, and shoots to create a worldwide understanding and awareness of Napoli and its surrounding areas’ drastic, seemingly irreversible crime problems.

The plight of the people of Naples goes back many years, and they have been under the rule of ‘the system’ for just as long as those in other parts of Italy who live under the watchful eye of the Cosa Nostra and the Ndrangheta. The dispersal of its many cells and fractions has been compared to the tentacles of an octopus spreading throughout all levels of society, leaving nothing untouched and everything under the influence of their unruly, unpredictable yet culturally adaptable authority.

Where the Cosa Nostra and Ndrangheta forged quite public roots in the US -- spurring movies like Goodfellas and The Godfather Trilogy -- the Camorra preferred to keep their influence a little more low-profile. That is until the early part of this century, when their influence on the local economy, politics and public welfare sparked young journalist Roberto Saviano to write a book that exposed the experiences of his fellow citizens, some of whom grew up in Scampia, an area entirely run by the Camorra. When published, the book (titled “Gomorra -- Viaggio nell’impero economico e nel sogno di dominio della camorra”) was an instant success.

The movie, although based on the book, concentrates more on the lower levels of the Camorra Saviano covered. It focuses on the effects the Camorra has on the area’s youth and its slightly dodgy waste disposal business.

Gomorra is certainly hard-hitting, and its popularity will ultimately raise awareness of the problems faced by many Italians, yet it still only scrapes at the surface of Saviano’s book and the problems Camorra creates. The movie is heralded universally as a crime thriller or a gritty gangland flick, and many will go to the movies for this fact rather than the messages it carries. After all, the millions around the world who have a Scarface or Goodfellas poster above their beds, do not do so because they were disgusted by the brutality on the screen, but because the bearer looks up to them, wants to be like them, will act like them, rap about them and play games featuring them.

This was never more apparent than when Gorrane admitted he never had any trouble from the Camorra; in fact, they liked the film, and the thought of being portrayed on the big screen is somewhat more glamorous to them than being condoned in a book. While Gorrane waltzes around on the red carpet, Saviano will continue to cower behind his bodyguards, wondering when he will next be able to, in his own words, “take a walk, get some sun, walk in the rain and meet my mother without scaring her and being afraid.”

~Kevin Soar