Calabrese, 'Gomorrah' add harsh, riveting reality to mob life
America loves its mobsters. Whether it's Al Capone wielding a baseball bat and a smirk in "The Untouchables" or Tony Soprano unburdening his inner wiseguy to his shrink, we like our mobsters as charming rogues -- funny, but nasty when necessary.
Mobsters, we are told, have their own code, their own sense of honor, their own family values.
Just watch "The Godfather," a movie that bestows a sense of honor and operatic tragedy to thug life.
Actual wiseguys adore "The Godfather" and why wouldn't they?
Still, while there's nothing wrong with a little escapism, it's good to have a corrective now and again, especially when what's real is much more fascinating than anything Hollywood could produce.
One of those antidotes can be found in a courtroom here in town; the other, believe it or not, in a movie theater.
On March 26, mob hit man Nick Calabrese is going to be sentenced in a federal courtroom for killing more than a dozen people for the Chicago Outfit. Calabrese was more than a killer, though. He was the star government witness in the Family Secrets case that brought down some of the most vicious mob leaders in town.
On the witness stand, Nick Calabrese was no charming hit man, no master killer.
At one of his Outfit hits, for instance, he left a gun inside the tarp that he wrapped his victim in.
At another, he got shot himself, and left behind a glove with his blood on it -- evidence that would eventually tie him to the crime and allow authorities to persuade him to cooperate.
In his mid-60s, Nick Calabrese seems more suited to be sitting at a restaurant, checking out the early bird special, than up on a witness stand, describing how he whacked someone.
He was nothing like another man on trial in Family Secrets, Joey "The Clown" Lombardo -- who is the closest thing Chicago has to a Hollywood gangster, despite his advancing years. During breaks in the trial, Lombardo wisecracked with courtroom observers and flirted with the courtroom artists.
Nor is Nick Calabrese like his brother, prolific mob killer Frank Calabrese Sr., whom Nick testified against, too.
Frank Calabrese Sr. quoted the Bible and tried to charm the jury when he took the stand, a grotesque enterprise which did nothing but creep them out.
No, there is nothing Hollywood about Nick Calabrese, and there won't be come time for his sentencing.
Life was garbage to Nick Calabrese, and he was the garbage man -- and not always the most competent one.
A similar attitude can be found in some of the characters in a new film from Italy, "Gomorrah," now playing in Chicago. It's based on the non-fiction best seller by Italian journalist Roberto Saviano.
Saviano did such a good job exposing the inner workings of the Neapolitan mob, that he's now under 24-hour police guard.
More than any movie ever made about organized crime, "Gomorrah" does a brilliant job showing the day-to-day life of the worker bees in organized crime, without an ounce of sentiment.
"Gomorrah" tells five stories, including one of a teenage boy eager to enter the Neapolitan mob, and another of a smooth businessman who's part of the so-called ecomafia in Italy that finds places to illegally dump industrial waste for big profit while poisoning the countryside.
In an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Saviano credits the success of his book, in part, to the fact that he did not romanticize organized crime.
"For me the force of 'Gomorrah' is its recounting of organized crime with no glamour, no spectacle, Saviano said. "In Italy that's what was missing."
Though half a world apart, there's one thing the movie and the upcoming sentencing of Nick Calabrese have in common: No one will ever watch either of them and feel the slightest bit of envy for a mobster's life.
Steve Warmbir has covered organized crime for the Chicago Sun-Times for nearly a decade.