Some thoughts I wrote back in October:

Throughout, the Camorra is portrayed as a microcosm in itself, with little wider context, and so, when at the end of the film intertitles inform us of the organisation’s social impact, the sudden contextual revelation feels cheap and unsatisfactory: if only we’d had this sort of stuff in the narrative itself, and not as part of some Terry George- or Edward Zwick-like post-script (both Hotel Rwanda and Blood Diamond invoke similar techniques).

It’s an engrossing film; the acting is nothing short of excellent, and individual scenarios are handled extremely well. But where it could have been a blend between City of God and The Wire, it becomes increasingly prone to Syriana Syndrome: potential emotional weight loses out to narrative devices, and we care little for anyone by the final fade to black. It’s a shoddy and elusive film, when it should be structured and interrogative. A frustrating waste.