It deals with the Casalesi clan, a crime syndicate within the Camorra — a traditional criminal organization based in Naples and Caserta, in the southern Italian region of Campania.

The film intertwines five separate stories of people whose lives are touched by organized crime against the backdrop of the ongoing feud.

Don CiroDon Ciro is a timid middleman who distributes money to the families of imprisoned Di Lauro clan members.

As the feud intensifies, families in the neighborhood whose loyalties are suspect are ordered to move out or suffer violence; Totò's fellow gang members receive similar threats.

The gang members decide to stand their ground and exact violent retribution by selecting a woman, Maria, as their next victim, as her son has joined a clan of Secondigliano secessionists.

Later, Franco and Roberto meet a family of farmers who, desperate to extinguish their debts, decide to allow the burial of chemical substances in their countryside.

PasqualePasquale is an haute couture tailor who works for Iavarone, a garment factory owner with ties to the Camorra.

Later, working as a truck driver, he is in a transport café where he spots Scarlett Johansson on TV wearing one of his dresses.

Impressed by mafia portrayals from Hollywood movies, they quote lines and spontaneously reenact scenes from Scarface in Walter Schiavone's villa while dropping references to Tony Montana, Miami, and Colombian drug cartels.

The word of the incident gets to the local mob chieftain, who summons them and warns them under threat of violence not to repeat such behavior in the future.

Once they run out of money, they use their guns to rob a video arcade, and spend their stolen funds at a strip club.

They accept the contract, which turns out to be a trap: they are ambushed and killed by Giovanni, Bernardino, Vittorio and others at the location of their supposed target, an abandoned beach resort next to Regi Lagni canal estuary.

[7] In reviewing Garrone's film based on the book, Christoph Huber wrote: "With its interest in moving beyond the categories of novel or non-fiction, Saviano's work has been identified as part of a heterogeneous strain of national literature, subsumed as the New Italian Epic.

"[8] Manohla Dargis of the New York Times stated, "part of what's bracing about Gomorrah, and makes it feel different from so many American crime movies, is both its deadly serious take on violence and its global understanding of how far and wide the mob's tentacles reach, from high fashion to the very dirt.

"[9] Jonah Weiner of Slate stated, "Gomorrah is a deeply moralizing film, brooking no ethical ambiguity or mitigating factors in its hellish vision of organized crime.

[19] The film, following the book on which it is based, portrays events identifiably similar to actual historical ones; for example, the Scampia feud.

[20] Oreste Spagnuolo, member of the Casalesi clan and main perpetrator of the Castel Volturno massacre, has alleged that Garrone paid a pizzo of 20,000 euros to proceed with the film.