Gotti

I made this face too during this film

John Travolta was the king of cinema in the late 70s. A double whammy of Saturday Night Fever and Grease made him famous. Bad career choices throughout the 80's followed and it wasn't until 1994 that Pulp Fiction brought him back to his earlier level of fame. He had a nice run until the turn of the century before bad choices made him crash and burn again. He was now more popular for his Scientology beliefs than his films. One or two good movies aside it's been a downhill trajectory since then. Now he's starring as famed mobster John Gotti in Gotti. A film stuck in development hell since 2010 that's just gotten a very quiet release on VOD platforms. This is not the film that will revitalise his career. It could be the one to end it though.

John Gotti was a member of the Gambino crime family in New York from the 1970's onward. His willingness to get his hands dirty and take part in murders saw him rise through the ranks of La Cosa Nostra rapidly. As his stature grew so did his ego and his lust for power. But in the criminal word you cannot trust anyone. Even your closest confidantes.

This was........this was just bad. The opening scene of Gotti addressing us directly to camera sets the tone and it's all down hill from there. There could have been something here but Travolta just kills it. He's awful. You can't take him seriously at all. It's not even a hammy performance you could laugh at. And because he's in nearly every scene his presence pervades and infects the entire thing. He marches through the film spewing motherfuckers and cocksuckers like the worst type of mafia film stereotype. It's the kind of bad acting that could retroactively ruin a career. I'm not overreacting here. It has to be seen to be believed. He's far from the only bad thing. Spencer LoFranco as John Gotti Jr is dreadful. Like Fair City acting levels of dreadful. He wonders around like a brick with gelled hair and everytime he talked I wanted to die.

10 minutes into this I paused it to check online was it a pisstake. It feels like a spoof of mafia films. Every mafia cliche you can think of is present and correct. A little bit into the film there's a murder played out like the punchline of a joke and scored by what can only be described as comedic music. It's a bizarre choice and a distasteful one too seeing as these were real people being killed and this was the moment I started thinking "This can't be serious can it?". Sadly it is. It's worst sin aside from the acting is it's being dull. This is the story of the Teflon Don, a gangster who became one of New York's best loved celebs. One of those stranger than fiction stories America does so well. A story full of madness, backstabbing and brutality like this shouldn't be so boring should it? Somehow this manages it. In 1996 HBO made a TV movie called Gotti starring Armande Assante as Gotti. It was cheap looking and it's historical accuracy left a lot to be desired but it pisses all over this. That film made use of it's supporting cast too. Here with get Stacy Keach and Kelly Preston (Travolta's real life wife) as background colour.

TBH, the only thing this film has going for it is it portrays a relatively accurate version of events and doesn't resort to making things up like the earlier film did especially the part of the story concerning a tragic chapter of Gotti's family life. That's all it has going for it aside from some quite convincing old age make up in the sections of the film where we see Gotti looking back on his life. Horribly it also does for Gotti what the New York public did for him years ago. It makes him look like a good guy. A friendly family man. He may well have been but he was also a murdering scumbag who made life for some people hellish. Use of real life news footage makes him out to be some kind of folk hero. He wasn't. He was filth and this romanticising of his life is very troubling.

Kevin Connolly of Entourage fame directed this piece of shit. I've a feeling it won't be at the forefront of his CV. It's one to forget. As for Travolta I was never the biggest fan of his but he's done some undeniably great work over the years. Chili Palmer in Get Shorty, Sean Archer/Castor Troy in Face/Off, Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction, Joey in She's So Lovely, Jack Stanton in Primary Colors And of course Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever. He has the talent so why is he wasting his time on this muck? Baffling.

Don't watch this. I took the bullet for ye.