American Godfathers: The Five Families

If flawed look at the five families of New York. For those that have taken a more than a casual interest in all things Mafia, then a lot of this will be part of the endless regurgitation of the same old stories that we've heard many times. There is also the same commonly held mistakes repeated here-the Gallo's killing Anastasia for example. Fortunately, they throw in a lot more rare footage here to render this show a bit more interesting for the long timers: we get Vito Genovese playing bowls, we get Joseph Colombo chatting away on the Dick Cavett show, etc. We also get a detailed look at Joe Massino, someone who I wasn't overly familiar with. So, worth a watch, but lets throw this energy at some lesser known mob stories: Chicago, Roy Demeo- I mean, even Carlo Gambino doesn't get a whole documentary to himself while John Gotti has a million. Someone obviously thinks these things are worth making, so let's mix it up a bit.

I enjoyed watching the series and thought it was well done and well presented. Most of the presenters were very good except Claire White who has a horrible voice and waved her arms around like a trained seal. Hard to believe she has any credibility for a docmentary like this. Other wise it was well done. I found it interesting as to what happened to some of these mobsters and who actually killed who. I believe that in the past some of this information was not known--eg. Sonny Black. Sad to see Rudy Giuliani today compared to what he was in that era amd the contribution he made to justice later to betray it all.