*Originally written September 30th, 2018*
You Gotti see this film. Gotti has Gotti be seen to be believed. Honestly, it's The Room of 2018, a film that's an insane disaster on all levels. Structurally incoherent, awfully written, outrageously performed and misguided in the sense it makes out some disgusting criminal to be a hero of the people.
I'm sure there's a fascinating film to be made about Gotti at some point, probably from a much safer pair of hands (Probably Scorsese), but not from Kevin Connolly (Yes, that one from Entourage). The fact this was meant to be John Travolta's shot at Oscar gold is just hilarious in itself.
Travolta's performance is a hard one to decipher. Part of me knows he's trying his hardest for some shot at awards recognition, but the other part of me just feels he was just here to take the piss. There are some minor moments where a convincing performance comes through, but 95% of the time he's giving such an insanely over the top and ridiculous performance of a New York Italian mob boss that it feels like parody. Travolta's turned up to 11 New York accent is remarkable, making way for some of the most unintentional comedy of the year. The film opens and closes with him overlooking New York at night while addressing the audience and saying "New Yawk, the greatest city in the world" and "There won't ever be another guy like me, even if you live to 5,000 years old", before smash cutting to credits.
As a crime film it feels remarkably dull, going through the motions and things you've seen countless times in much better films. Made worse by the fact this feels like a jumbled mess of scenes to piece together this monster's life. We spend far too much time on things that aren't interesting and skim over the potentially intriguing stuff.
For example the scene where Gotti's son dies after an accident involving a neighbour, it is brushed over and resolved so quickly. The character's grieve and get over it within 5 minutes and they do not go into the murder of the neighbour who accidentally killed his son at all. There's just a brief news report of what happened to him. I know it was never confirmed in real life that Gotti had him killed, but it's pretty obvious and it's weird the film didn't even have the balls to address the possibility. Honestly, the Wikipedia page about Gotti is far more interesting.
I feel this was just a scene of random and meaningless assassinations at one point. I swear to god, there is no less than three montages of people getting "whacked" through this entire experience. It's all done in such a poor and cheap manner, it's low-budget, sure, but it's no excuse for a film that got released theatrically to look like a made for TV biopic. It's clear everyone involved in the making of this was just very under experienced for had only worked in TV.
As well, it is appalling that the filmmakers have decided to go the route that John Gotti is a hero of the people and constantly just harassed by the government, despite, you know, him being a murderer and criminal. I'm actually unsure what his other crimes are aside from a bunch of assassinations? I don't think they ever mention once what any of his other criminal activities were? This is all also made so much worse by the use of real footage of random people putting up signs like "Long live Gotti". Fuck those morons. If I was walking down the street and I saw someone praising a murderer and criminal in the streets, I would spit on them.
I nearly forgot that there's 3 songs from Mr Worldwide himself, Pitbull and there are absolutely horrendous. They feel like something from Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and not a serious gangster biopic aiming for Oscar recognition.
When it's all said and done, Gotti is worth watching for just how hilariously bad it is and Travolta's completely gonzo performance that just falls flat at every turn. Imagine if Tommy Wiseau had directed Goodfellas, that's what we're dealing with here. It's fascinating and for that I'm calling it now, it's the best bad film of the year. Long live Gotti.
2/10 Dans
Gotti is out now on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK
Watch the trailer below:
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