Gotti

Dir: Kevin Connolly

2018

*

Any film that is slated before it is even open is a film I want to stick up for. Gotti’s turbulent journey from conception to cinema is well known. Fiore Films announced that it had secured the rights from Gotti Jr. to produce a film about his life back in 2010. Initially, the great Barry Levinson was to direct the film, then Nick Cassavetes and then Joe Johnston. Al Pacino was originally meant to star too and it felt that the film could have been the next Goodfellas or Godfather. Chazz Palminteri was going to reprise his role as Paul Castellano from Boss of Bosses and both Ben Foster and Lindsay Lohan were attached at one point. One by one the directors and actors left the project. Joe Pesci originally was cast as Angelo Ruggiero early in development and gained 30 pounds in order to properly portray him. After having his salary cut and being recast as Lucchese underboss Anthony Casso, he sued Fiore Films for $3 million. Film makers have been trying to coax Pesci back into the movies for years without success, so for Fiore Films to pull a fast one like that just goes to show just how inept they are. In the end, John Travolta was cast in the main role and it does feel like he convinced his wife to come out of retirement to play Gotti’s wife just because they had run out of actors to play her. The last director they could find was Kevin Connolly who was totally unsuited and unqualified for such a film. Spencer Lofranco – whose only claim to fame at this point was a conviction of a hit and run – played John "Junior" Gotti. Gotti’s son and wife actually oversaw the filming and were on set to make sure everything was authentic but I suspect that they were either ignored or allowed to indulge themselves. The story leans heavily towards John "Junior" Gotti account of events and is very sympathetic towards the gangsters portrayed. I don’t understand why people glorify gangsters but I acknowledge it happens, but nothing of what they do is ever morally questioned. It is as if they’re just part of a family business and are harassed unnecessarily by law enforcement and other enterprises. The characters shrug, look around the room and ask ‘Wadd did di do?’ right after committing murder but it isn’t supposed to matter because they ‘did a lot of work for the community’. It’s a part of the story that I’ll never understand but a biopic should be impartial and show everything for what it is, letting the audience decide whether or not Gotti was a king or a criminal. The film is an absolute mess. The direction is poor, with many different styles explored and none of them particularly working. It’s like it was shot by five different directors but it wasn’t, it was directed by one who couldn’t make up his mind on how he wanted the film to look like. The character development is shocking, so when a main character dies in a tragic accident or is bumped off by a rival gang we really don’t care as we have no emotional investment in them. There is a complete lack of build up or suspense, leaving nothing in terms of intrigue, mystery or interest. The narrative sucks, seriously, it’s probably the worst example I have ever seen. I’d heard about Gotti only through Fun Loving Criminals’ 1996 song King of New York and I still don’t feel I know that much about him. The whole film we are told how much Gotti was a part of New York and New York was part of him but apart from the first and last 30 seconds of the film New York is no where to be seen (not surprising as the film was shot in Ohio). Lionsgate pulled the film ten days away from its scheduled opening date but the producers exercised the buy-back clause in their contracts. This sort of thing tends to send all the wrong signals to distributors and audiences alike, I went in with an open mind but I now know exactly how Lionsgate must have felt after seeing it. All that said, I felt that John Travolta put in a good performance, he was just terribly let down by every other element of the film. I thought his visual aging process was well handled – he should totally just accept his baldness as it looks good on him – but the impressive prosthetics and make-up are totally let down by the fact that absolutely no one else is given the same treatment. Within twenty-five years Gotti goes from dapper to old man while his son goes from young boy to young boy with glasses. And what was up with his haircut? It went unchanged in twenty-five years and the real Gotti Jr actually never had that haircut in the first place. The music is particularly awful, sounding like a b-movie action film all written within half a day on an old Casio keyboard. Rapper Pittball also provides the film with the most misplaced rap songs ever to grace the wrong film. The way MoviePass handled the publicity and marketing of the film tells you everything you need to know. Not only did they brazenly buy 40% of the tickets to make themselves look good, they also created thousands of Rotten Tomato accounts to write amazing reviews of the film. They went a little overboard and were caught out when the audience approval score was 80% and the critics' score was 0%. Their response was "Audiences loved Gotti but critics don't want you to see it... The question is why???” but people saw through it when all the accounts that praised the film were only a month old and all of them had only one other review on their accounts – American Animals – the only other film that MoviePass owned. The film deserves all the hate it has received apart from John Travolta who I personally think was let down. Shame, because if it wasn’t directed by an idiot who was trying so desperately to copy Goodfellas – it could have been the next Goodfellas.