Gotti

The filmmakers had absolutely no idea what they wanted out of this movie. You can tell it took 44 producers and 8 years to make. Who was the protagonist? What style did they want to adopt? Is it a documentary? A character piece? A chronology of John Gotti's life? I couldn't tell. There was 4 time lines happening at once. Way to many names and places. It was simply boring and had no suspense. However, Travolta's performance wasn't bad, the script was. He definitly did the best he could with what he was given. Long story short, I have no more affection or knowledge of the Gotti family now than I did before the movie. Go watch the Sopranos instead.

It's bad enough this film took four directors, 44 producers and eight years to make, but then adding actor Kevin Connolly turned novice director, and two novice screenwriters made this film unbearable.

The writing was a hack job and all over the place and the director clearly had issues directing his all-star cast, not to mention his poor choice of camera angles and annoying zoom in's that seemed to be filmed by a 10 year old with a 1990's HandyCam.

The story itself was however very interesting and Travolta and the rest of the cast did the best they could with the convoluted mess the novice film-makers handed them.

It's a very generous 6/10 from me.

There's an attempt here to give us a flavour of the life of John Gotti - the Teflon Don; the real-life godfather; the head of the Gambino crime family in New York City. It centres around a visit by John Jr. to his father in prison, as Gotti is dying of cancer and Junior is cutting a deal with prosecutors to serve his time and then get out of the life. And as that encounter progresses, the story of Gotti's "career" and its impact on his real family is revealed as he rose to head of the family.

To be blunt, this isn't a great movie. It paints a picture of life in organized crime, but to me it seemed poorly put together, with no real flow or over-arching narrative; things just being thrown together sometimes with little rhyme or reason. There isn't really much in the way of character development. We get the point that we're watching movie about a bunch of mobsters, but I can't honestly say that I found myself caring much about anyone. The lead role was played by John Travolta. His performance was, I thought, uneven. And the truth is that the movie didn't really hold my attention. There were times when it became little more than background noise because, frankly, it just wasn't that interesting. It desperately needed better pacing, and a better flow to the story. (3/10)

"Gotti" is not as bad as advertised. Do you like John Travolta? If so, this is his picture, and it would have been better if he had more control over it - particularly the editing. "Gotti" does not flow, it is episodic - choppy, as though several Gotti blackouts were slapped together, which offloads suspense and vastly reduces tension. Add to that the random addition of a loud music score. I say 'random' because the music is a bunch of '80's hits which do not provide context and weren't all hits. Plus, the music track was so loud as be intrusive.

Travolta carries the picture, and a big mistake was made in selecting the actor for the Junior Gotti part. Spencer LoFranco makes a nice appearance but lacks acting ability and does this movie no favors. The rest of the cast is good and come off as credible 'gangstas'. It is a good - but not great - picture which relies a lot on dialogue and needed more action and better editing.

Just an FYI any review over a 3 star is fake so after you get done reading the entire fake "Entourage" friend of Mr Director is that is even what you should call him read this real review who knows everything about John Gotti. What you see on screen is a iPhone googled TV script of no substance no direction with nothing new that I have not already heard on A&e or 60 minutes 20 times. I know for sure John Gotti is turning over in his grave from this garbage. If you watched A&E's Godfather and Son then you already saw this movie as this director pretty much sat down with John Gotti Jr or even watched that series and said I can make a movie about this. If you see at the end of that 4 part series you see them on set and you see the director with his IPhone taking to Travolata as I swear he shot this movie from his phone and used movieshop editing app. Travolta does a "nice" job as Junior says. I can't even go on to even waste more time thinking about this junk anymore as from the first minute I wanted leave as every real clip they showed you have seen they show over and over, nothing new. For the music I swear they went thru the list of songs that were cheap and just placed them in there with no meaning or syncope to the scene. Eric do us all a favor and go back to playing Mr Agent in Entourage and please don't get that world confused with the real movie making world and actually think you have a clue of what you were doing out there as the Gambino family Should hun you down for even putting this crap on screen hence the Crapper John tittle.