User Reviews

If you've ever seen 2015's Entourage, you'll likely recall a scene in which Jeremy Piven's super-agent Ari Gold sits down to watch the directorial debut of movie superstar Vincent Chase. He sits clenching his teeth because he knows it's going to be awful, and when we get to see a snippet of Chase's garish futuristic monstrosity, we know it to. Only in this consequence-free world of naked ladies and supercars, the film is actually a masterpiece. You get a similar feeling when watching Gotti, the biopic of the Teflon Don directed by Entourage star Kevin Connolly. One can picture Connolly, surrounded by his boys, viewing the final cut in the editing room for the first time and high-fiving his entourage bros with a sense of clueless triumph. Gotti is an utter travesty, a half-baked film student's daydream seen through a haze of weed smoke which loosely throws together a few lines they might remember from Gotti's Wikipedia page.

John Travolta plays John Gotti, and with a decent script and a competent director behind him, this may have been one of the roles of his career. Instead, we get a sluggish performance that barely skims the surface of one of the most notorious and powerful figures in mafia history. We meet him grey and in jail, taking in a visit from his son John Jr. (Spencer Rocco Lofranco), whose book the film is based on. Jr., a made man himself, wants to take a plea deal offered by the police, but rolling over for the government is as despicable as being a rat in the old man's books. This offers John Sr. the chance to reflect on his life and decisions, so the film jumps back in time to remind us how Gotti rose from gangster soldier to the boss of bosses. Only Connolly isn't interested in telling a coherent story, choosing instead to throw in a bunch of seemingly random moments you may expect to be reconstructed on a Discovery Channel documentary. There's a mob hit here, a domestic argument there, and every now and then Gotti will say something to his son about respect and manhood.

I'm not particularly fond of biopics as it goes, but I can't recall ever leaving a film feeling like I know even less about its subject matter than I did when I came in. Rather than peeling away Gotti's layers to understand what motivated the man behind the dapper suits, Connolly stages scene after scene of unconnected action and wiseguy rambling, like a man raised on the work of Martin Scorsese and who may have seen The Sopranos at some point in his life, but without a grasp on what made those works of art so absorbing. If this isn't bad enough, Gotti is peppered with a near-constant soundtrack of songs apparently plucked out of the air. An over-reliance on music is always a telltale sign of a director without vision, but it's especially grating here, with everything from Dean Martin to Duran Duran to Pitbull thrown in for good measure. It ends with real footage of Gotti's funeral in 2002, intercut with regular folk beaming about how good the gangster was for the community. He may have been just that, only we wouldn't know it from this film. After almost 2 hours of brooding, murder and terrible parenting, these final moments only leave a bad taste in the mouth. We may someday get a good movie about John Gotti, but for now we'd be better served watching Jim Abrahams' Mafia!.

There is a revealing moment in "Gotti" when the "Dapper Don," John Gotti, makes the decision to boot his long time associate Angelo Ruggiero out of the Gotti crime syndicate. The term that is used for this kind of banishment is putting a man "on the shelf." The film suggests that being placed on the shelf was a fate worse than death for Ruggiero, who in fact died of natural (i.e., non-gangland criminal) causes.

The "on the shelf" theme reappears in what is the most successful part of the film in the relationship of Gotti and his son, John A. Gotti, Jr. While his father is dying of cancer in prison, a meeting occurs in which the younger Gotti breaks the word to his father and his sacred pledge to the cosa nostra. Gotti, Jr. has decided to accept a plea deal with the intent to remove himself permanently from the family business.

The father-son conflict and drama that builds out of two generations of different views on "La Famiglia," is compelling in the final third of the film. The actors, especially John Travolta as Gotti, Sr., were dynamic in their roles and developed a compelling psychological tug-of-war between father and son.

On the other hand, the remainder (and majority) of the film relied far too heavily on a highlight reel of criminal activities of the Gambino family. The focus on Gotti's rise to power through the murder of "Big Paul" Castellano in broad daylight outside the Sparks Steak House in midtown Manhattan was an all-too-familiar story that did not shed new light on Gotti.

The film also failed to demonstrate the great popular appeal of Gotti, especially in New York where he gained an enormous following right up to the time of his death. How does one explain this phenomenon in light of the overwhelming evidence, including recordings of Gotti's own voice, for Gotti's brutal criminal activities? One of Gotti's mottoes was "never take a backward step." But the film never portrayed Gotti as taking a step forward. Contrary to his creed, Gotti's quest for power always seemed to moving his life in reverse.

Raised on the streets of New York, John Gotti found his way into the Gambino crime family, eventually having the boss removed and becoming head of the powerful family.

His wife asked only one thing from John, to never expose their children to his profession.

But he broke the vow, and John Jr. took his place.......

Yes, the film is all over the shop, we jump from one time line to another, and then back again, any other film would follow his rise to power seamlessly, and it doesn't seem to focus on one character for longer than a couple of scenes.

When we think the film is going to focus on one character arc, just as their story becomes mildly interesting, Travolta bursts on to set swearing at the top of his voice, with an expression on his face as if to say 'Excuse me, but what is this film called?' and then the focus goes back on to him.

So it's lucky that even though he chews scenery like there is no tomorrow, it's good to see the actor not coasting and upping his game after some terrible cinematic decisions.

Here, he harks back to when Pulp Fiction gave him a much needed resurgence, and even though some of the films that made money were pretty awful (Micheal, Mad City), he was always watchable as he has that star power.

So for that alone, this is worth watching for him, especially when you think that former stars from his 'time' (Willis in particular) have done nothing more than coast from role to role.

Yes, you will be thinking of much better films int his genre, and the script is really bad in some parts, but it's never boring, and it does what it says on the tin.

It tells it's story, in a bizarre manor, but it does tell it's story.