Too much of everything

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Story's the same but the players change. Gangsters battle their way to fortune - and for Gotti, some fame, and ultimately the fortune weakens ties and sows doubt about motives and loyalty. Gotti was a hard-working, charming mobster and his commitment took him to the top of the Gambino crime family but when you get to the top, you have to be the most rational to stay there for a long time. Missteps can easily let in who you thought were your allies and there's a reason people aren't mob bosses long.The film features great acting by Armando Assante, William Forsythe, and Anthony Quinn as the head of the Gambino family. Quinn owns the scenes he is in. Assante makes the Teflon Don charming but also so vain that little slights set him off. Forsythe is electric and the air of menace around him is practically a character in and of itself. As always, it takes good writing to bring an exciting story to the screen and so writers Gene Mustain, Jerry Capeci, and Steve Shagan deserve credit for showing the excesses of the life of the Teflon Don and for not stinting on the brutality of life as a mafioso. The wealth and power that mob bosses get ultimately does them in as they start to believe their own legends. Mustain, Capeci, and Shagan show the hard work but also the violence that brings them down hard.Gotti ruled NYC for a while and as a kid at the time I heard his name a lot. This film is a good primer for learning about the life and times of John Gotti.

There was a period, about when this feature was made for television, when the good folks of the REAL mafia sat around together enjoying one mafia movie after another, chuckling, making critical comments, and arguing about who should play each of THEM in the next movie.There seemed to be a Victoria Falls of mafia movies. It was a genre unto itself -- not quite just another gangster movie, not a shoot-'em-up action thriller, and not a throwaway glance at human character and morality.You could almost get the impression that it was all a fictional universe, like the "Star Trek" or "Star Wars" franchises. But, though the movies were stretched a bit and some of them purported to be fiction, the organization, its norms and milieu, were real enough. There was a clam bar on Kenmore in New York's Little Italy we used to patronize regularly, Little Charlie's. One crowded night, there were no tables available and Uncle Flory inquired about those two empty tables in he back, already set for dinner. "Er, those tables are always empty so they'll be available in case any of the important, erm, 'businessmen' of the community happen to drop in." Who WOULDN'T kill for that kind of rispetto? John Gotti was known as the "Dapper Don". He wore million-dollar sharkskin suits you could see your reflection in, ten billion-dollar Rolex watches that were made of platinum inside and out -- all worn at the same time on the same wrist, and mahogany colored shoes made of unborn loggerhead turtle skin. His car was forty feet long, powered by the same engine that kept a Boeing 707 aloft, and made of tiled Kevlar painted international orange. The vanity license plate read GOTTI GOT IT, YOU AIN'T. His cigars were hand rolled by virgins in Bora Bora. And his twenty pinkie rings were REALLY expensive. He never avoided self display either, usually wearing a modest grin for the cameras. Just another fella.He rose pretty quickly to head the Gambino family in New York before his underboss, Sammy ("the moral nihilist") Gravano, ratted him out. Gotti went to prison for life and Gravano, a multi-murderer, after spending three years in the slams, went into the witness protection agency.Armand Assante does very well by the role of Gotti. The mannerisms are right, but sometimes he talks too fast. Sometimes he speaks more quickly than I can think. Really, there were little outbursts, imprecations, in which the phonemes swept past my apperceptive apparatus like a sudden gust of wind. He's a good actor, capable of carrying a dumb comedy as well as a drama or even the myth of Odysseus with conviction.Anthony Quinn, ancient and creaking, does his best, as does Marc Lawrence, who has been a gangster for many years, going back to "The Asphalt Jungle." I've always like William Forsythe, who has the eyes of some kind of reptilian chimera, but is a good solid reliable supporting player. He was my co-star in the inestimably poetic ex-con masterpiece, "Weeds." I took a liking to him and coached him through his more difficult scenes.You know, though, the MBAs who greenlight these projects may have a problem. What is there that is still unsaid about the Mafia? Next up: movies about the making of movies about the Mafia.

A superb performance by Armand Assante as Gotti.A fast-paced exploration of the Gambino crine family of New York. The film focuses on the violent aspect of organized crime and the police operations to fight it and bring John Gotti to justice. This fact based drama is a powerful,disturbing saga of the Mafia in America. It is a tale of a iron willed Capo who later became the most powerful leader in American mob history. Gotti chose to live and die by the gun in order to reap vast fortunes and personal power,and of the plots they weave in the course of turning crime into a business.

This HBO biopic of Gambino family head John Gotti is a tolerable piece of junk. The performances are uniformly unremarkable, that includes the star(Assante)and the token "Veteran Star"(the formerly great Anthony Quinn). Second of all absolutely no-one in the cast looks like who they play,whats with Paul Castellano being 800 pounds?! The script is cardboard at best,"Mafia=Pure unadulterated evil, FBI=Living Saints". And just when you thought it could'nt get anymore third rate, the movie starts to think it's on the level of "Goodfellas", and at times "The Godfather". In the end the only thing that saves this thing from being a total waste is the fact that it tells a truly interesting story, although not well.