Gotti - The Most Authentic Gangster Movie Ever Made?

[Music] mob movie fans ate well in the '90s between the likes of good Fells Casino Miller Crossing Reservoir Dogs a bronx tail kito's way Bugsy and more there was crime movie of Plenty in the genre's last great decade sitting in and amongst all these gangster films is 1996's gty a biography of John gotty known as the dadon or the Teflon Don the last of the flamboyant Mafia crime bosses who didn't shy away from media attention directed by Robert Harmon and produced by HBO the film charts the rise

of Gotti to becoming the head of the gambino crime family before being convicted of racketeering and murder in the '90s which was just a few years before the film's release and it does so in a tidy runtime of just under 2 hours this is not a retro review which which I've done a few times in the channel reviews of films I've already seen because believe it or not I've never seen gotty before despite having seen so many Mafia films gotty always evaded me and the only gotty film I've seen is a cer

tain other adaption of the man's life so I've got a bit of a bad taste in my mouth with gotty story but even still comparing the two films it's quite remarkable just how much of a difference in quality two films can have that are both based on the same thing no doubt the 1996's film's reputation already considered something of an underrated sleeper gem in the genre will get even better because now people will constantly compare it to the terrible Travolta version Michael Frances former Columbo c

rime family cappo once described Gotti as the most authentic gangster film ever made is he right well he'll know way more about that than I would and for sure this is a word that comes to mind when one wants to describe Gotti authentic there's just something about this film that feels real it's a downto earth realness that we saw in good fellow which stripped the supposed honorable world of gangsters from the facades of codes and integrity but even Good Fellas was heavily stylized with this film

for much of it it just feels like it's telling a down-to-earth story with the larger than Life Element coming from the Larger than Life titular character played by an actor giving a larger than life performance that kind of low-key grittiness would again be seen in Donnie Brasco just a year later and then perfected in The Sopranos in fact we all know how good Fellas inspired The Sopranos but Gotti played just as much of an influence convincing HBO that a show about the mob could work and many o

f the actors in This film were cost in the show there's tangible reasons for the feel of body too like tons of tiny little details that make a difference like say Neil making a quick signal and someone instantly turning the cassette or radio off we've got our friend with a big snatch a house Mr meoo and a guy who single-handedly took on an interior decorator and Cinema Legend Anthony Quinn was in this film giving a magnificent performance as Gotti's Mentor Neil delross at over 80 years of age a

performance with gravitar with presents and yet warmth which really makes you feel that he and Gotti had a father and son likee Connection in spite of limited screen time I always liked Quinn I first became aware of him when he played the Libyan Freedom Fighter Omar mkar in Lion of the desert he gave an ace performance in across 110th Street and was great in lastrada and Lawrence of Arabia and those are just a few of his big films I could never quite work out where he was from was he British was

he American what he was Mexican but he played an Italian America gangster so effortlessly what an actor though a career like his the various nationalities and races he played it couldn't exist today and it was so cool having such a juggernaut in this little TV movie and why was this a TV movie seriously it's got a stacked cast I didn't even mention the likes of William forye and Richard safaran honestly with maybe 10 15 minutes added to flesh things out I could easily see the film musling its w

ay through the crowd and becoming one of the more well-known featurelength gangster movies of the '90s it's ironic that a film about the most well-known mobster since Al Capone is so obscure from what I gather it was supposed to originally be released in cinemas but the film faced funding issues and then there's Armand Asante what a performance I heard some great things about his role in the film but I was blown away by how good the guy was those who have seen a lot of archive footage of the rea

l Gotti say he nailed it I can't quite comment on that but he was electric it was like he had a current up his ass the entire film and sometimes it felt good and other times it made him mad he's just so badass and command's presence he did remind me of Stallone a few times played sly's brother in a couple of films didn't he there are lines he has given dialogue he says that would have been cringeworthy if said by a lesser or miscast actor as we've seen with the another GOI movie with Travolta do

ing the whole use AAP and oh but Asanti sells it so well an incredible performance so captivating he's done one of those performances that makes you want to act like him and talk like him in the mirror when no one's watching to embarrass you you don't know the streets like me over here you shouldn't like this guy he's bigheaded he breaks the rules but gets upset when others do the same but in typical Mafia movie fashion you do like him and much of it is carried by the actor's Charisma I'm surpri

sed that he wasn't in more mob movie stuff after this he had a small role as a mobster in Ridley Scots American Gangster but not much apart from that why not cost him in The Sopranos or something he could have been Jackie sen or someone it would have made for good continuity because he looks like David proval who played Jackie's brother Richie everyone was great in the film a lot of great actors actors who look and feel the part they don't need to do much just the way they look and talk you inst

antly buy that they are mobbed up again authenticity a down toe feel because the actors feel down toe but I remember when some of these actors used to wait in the car and as far as I'm concerned there should still be there the movie is well structured narrative wise it isn't the easiest thing to do in making a biopic but Gotti's highs in the film often take place altogether beating charges getting a promotion frustrating the feds and the lows all come at the same time too which makes for a film

that doesn't feel as disjointed as it could have done if it decided it wanted to be a documentary The Script is informative and smart the dialogue for example it just wasn't swearing and arguments between Mobsters everybody trying to act cool you can see multiple sides of the arguments and that makes the dilemas the characters go through more interesting you could even have this movie told from Sammy the Bull's point of view a paranoid mob hitter who thinks his boss is out to get him and will se

ll him to the feds you could have it from Neil's point of view an old man desperate not to leave behind a Waring family or even Paul Castellano a mobster wanting to take the mob into the legitimate World being oburg by this volatile unstable hoodlum named Gotti who is a side character this is just the way they chose to tell the story and this works because the characters and actors are strong it even deal eles into existentialism I really loved Neil's deathbed scene he had a great monologue with

good wisdom any scene with Quinn was golden Rudy another being where he lays it into Gotti about how close he came to getting killed a lot of the movie's focus is on Mob politics so really it could work as a movie set in ancient Rome a movie set in the world of big business and it fuses this film about politics with the life of John Gotti I would have loved for it to have some more room to breathe though I wonder what they could have done with another 30 minutes some bits are hard to follow and

dialogue moves very fast I watched a DVD quality version but I see that there are remastered versions I'd probably enjoy it even more and pick up on more stuff if I watched it in HD I suppose I don't need to go through Gotti's story with you because if you've clicked on this video you probably are already familiar with it and if Travolta's version is the only other main Contender for AG goti biopic well let's just say I always thought there was room for a definitive biopic of John Gotti and yet

here is one sitting right here it did love the man a bit too much though there were clearly attempts to make him seem like he was a really good man on a level when much of what we know tells us he was extremely vicious and no matter how far the film wanted to lean in the other direction I couldn't help feel it inadvertently made a great case for Castellano wanting to whack gotty and for Sammy gravano to betray him there were some comments Gotti made in prison to a black guy which kind of made i

t look like he was above racism and yet there is a tape of the real man saying being the n-word is an embarrassment and he's talking about a kid and then there's the thing with his kid Gotti's son was killed when his neighbor John favara accidentally hit him with a car when the kid was playing in the road Ferrara was kidnapped and disappeared with it being widely suspected Gotti ordered his death and he later saying something along the lines of not minding if the man turned up dead pretty conven

ient that he went on holiday 3 days before his neighbor disappeared in the movie however gotty tells his men not to do anything that it was an accident but they go ahead and kill the civilian anyway that robbed me up the wrong way I felt it was in poor taste I wonder how ferrara's family how his children would react seeing Jon's death depicted with Gotti looking like he handled the situation with honor and didn't want him harmed and I don't even want to think about the rumors that he personally

killed favara with a chainsaw which of course isn't in the movie and he doesn't need to be a good guy anyway that kind of stuff wasn't necessary this isn't a Disney movie as santes Charisma carried it and was enough for us to stick with the protagonist plus seeing him do things that are actively wrong makes him a more interesting character however on that point I do have to say that the last shot of the the film is very interesting and potentially changes things in got's closing monologue he tal

ks about how they're going to wish there was still a John Gotti things like that but he's looking into a mirror with a warped reflection of himself unlike the similar scene which opens the film and perhaps the movie is actually doing something really clever here because that's what the film is a warped reflection of a man who wasn't what he actually thought he was the story is distorted like the way he looks reflected in the mirror because it's told from his point of view I wonder if that was th

e intention behind the entire film or if it was something thrown in at the end but at the very least the ending was definitely intentional there's no way they would end the film like that without a reason so what do you think of this gotty movie do you think it deserves to be counted among the best mob pictures let me know in the comment section below subscribe to the channel and thanks for watching