By Philippe Bastien
[dropcap]R[/dropcap]anging from savage to frankly humorous, critics are giving Gotti, a mess that aspires to be a memorable addition to the mob genre, not only a failing grade, but a distinction that could make it some day a midnite cult: one of the worst movies ever made. Watch out Ed Wood, here come Kevin Connolly and Randall Emmett.
Below, a sampler, in case you doubt us.
From Peter Travers, Rolling Stone:
John Travolta, trying earnestly to act his way through a ton of lousy makeup and an even heavier slab of bad screenwriting, plays mafioso John Gotti in this chaotic biopic that jumps all over the place but still fails to manifest a pulse. As the Teflon Don tells us upfront: “This life ends one of two ways: Dead, or in jail. I did both.” Audiences, sentenced to do time with this corpse of a movie, will know the feeling.
Here’s the thing: It didn’t have to be such a botch job. There’s real drama in this tale of the dapper mobster who became a media sensation as he moved from enforcer for New York’s powerful Gambino crime family to its ruthless boss. From his 1992 conviction for five murders, conspiracy to commit murder, racketeering, obstruction of justice, tax evasion, illegal gambling, extortion and loansharking to his 2002 death from throat cancer at the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, Gotti did a lot of depraved things, but he didn’t do dull. Not so director Kevin Connolly (that’s right, E from Entourage), who blunts every story edge by making a lifeless jumble of the already cut-and-paste script by Lem Dobbs and Leo Rossi.
Their biggest mistake was putting focus on the wrong Gotti. The source material for the film is the self-published memoir by John Gotti, Jr. (a flailing Spencer Rocco Lofranco), a chip off the old block who agonizes about taking a plea deal to get out of prison. Big Daddy is appalled: “If I robbed a church and had the steeple sticking out of my ass, I’d still say I didn’t do it!” It’s Junior’s rose-colored image of Gotti that we get here. The loving husband to pill-popping wife Victoria (Travolta’s real-life wife Kelly Preston), the proud dad of four who bites his knuckle in agony when a young son is killed by a reckless driver. And everyone who dies at his hand is worthless scum. Are you crying yet? Gotti’s only rival for mob sainthood is Gotti Jr., who the film argues got a raw deal and was justifiably released from prison after four racketeering indictments the courts couldn’t make stick. For a while, I thought I was watching The Sopranos re-imagined as a tearjerker, as if this amateur tour of mobsterland – set in New York but shot in (dear God) Cincinnati – could even touch the artful menace of David Chase’s landmark HBO series.
From Louisa Moore, Screen Zealots
“Gotti” is as awful as you’ve heard, and don’t let anyone tell you any different. Nobody, from a professional critic to an average moviegoer to anybody who has ever seen just one movie in their entire life, can think this is any good. And if they do, I would recommend you never trust their judgment on anything ever again.
John Travolta stars as infamous crime boss John Gotti, a powerful man who rose to the top of the Gambino crime family in New York City. The film spans three decades of his life, from his home persona as a family man to his multiple jail sentences, is recounted by his son John Jr. (Spencer Rocco Lofranco) in a series of confusing flashbacks. The movie tries to cram way too much into less than two hours and manages to barely touch the surface of the more interesting aspects of Gotti’s life.
The end result is an incoherent jumble not unlike that of puzzle pieces thrown together in a bag, shaken up, and heaved on the screen in an astonishing display of haphazard incompetence. There’s a wealth of captivating and lurid material about the famous “Teflon Don,” but the bullet points of Gotti’s life presented in this film are so cluttered that everything gets lost. Little makes sense, the erratic chronology doesn’t work, and Kevin Connolly‘s dreadful direction is full of excruciatingly poor choices that include moments like when Gotti’s son gets run over by a neighbor (blame editor Jim Flynn for lending a helping hand in this scene, a bumbling series of handheld close-ups and rapid cuts between a bicycle, the glare of the sun, squealing tires, and a simmering pot roast) and when a surprise car explosion is set to “West End Girls” by the Pet Shop Boys. Huh?
Adding to the fray of the storytelling method are misplaced archival footage clips of the real Gotti in action, and the unsettling feeling that the filmmakers idolize their subject as some kind of folk hero. At several points in the story they actually try to make you feel sorry for this murderous mobster. Guess what? I don’t. You know who I did leave the theater feeling sorry for? Travolta.
“Gotti” is Travolta’s pet project, a film he thought would put him back at the top of Hollywood’s A-list. He truly believed this was the performance that would define his career, and he threw much time and money behind the film. He’s terrible in it. Terrible. Playing Gotti from age 30 until his death at 61, Travolta is saddled with lousy makeup that only accentuates his overblown grimacing with scowling jowls and furrowed brow. This series of endless mugging for the camera feels like a parody actor intentionally overacting as a spoof of a well-known historical figure. Travolta is a crummy actor anyway, but here he is on par with Tommy Wiseau in “The Room.” You’re tearing me apart, Barbarino!
Sometimes the performances break through with a glimmer of entertainment, but only because they are unintentionally funny. This most often occurs whenever Kelly Preston (as Gotti’s wife Victoria) is onscreen with her bad wig and even worse fake accent. I failed to contain my laughter at one point in the film when she looks directly at her husband and, with all sincerity, says “I love youse.” Ditto for the whiny, wide-eyed blunder of a performance from Lofranco. The actors deliver their lines so poorly that this film begs to be destined for a future of audience participation screenings, shown ironically at midnight to a packed house of college kids who yell back and throw props at the screen.
“Gotti” isn’t just one of the worst mob movies ever made — it holds the distinction of being one of the worst movies ever made. Travolta was right about one thing: he will be winning some awards at the end of the year. But they’ll be Razzies and not Oscars.
From Carlos Diaz Reyes (Spanish)
Foreign critics concur. Gotti stinks. Below, an scathing review (in Spanish) filed by a distinguished Mexican critic, writing for Vanguardia.com, Carlos Diaz Reyes. He probes deeper than others and raises important questions, some would say teleological, about this film, like, why was it made?
De Carlos Diaz Reyes" Gotti, criminal incompetence
Gotti, la incompetencia criminal
Calificación: 3.2 de 10
¿A quién no le gustan los mafiosos? Vidas imposibles y ostentosas que nunca viviremos. Martin Scorsese ha hecho obras de arte cinematográficas de todo tipo de criminales y ni hablemos de “El Padrino”.Esto a través de alguna pantalla, claro, en la vida real nadie quiere estar cerca de actos de violencia tan atroces que seguro no se le han ocurrido a ninguna obra de ficción. Pero de todas formas algunos son venerados, como Robin Hoods modernos, ladrón que roba a ladrón, ya sea El Chapo o Pablo Escobar, cuyas figuras han inspirado un montón de películas y series. Entrados en detalle está Jesús Malverde, que alcanzó la cúspide divina.
John Gotti no llegaba a tanto, pero sí era bastante popular con la gente y ya ha tenido un par de encarnaciones audiovisuales. La más reciente es “El Jefe de la Mafia: Gotti” (“Gotti”, a secas, en su nombre original). Es el culto de la mafia en su más incompetente encarnación, una cinta hecha por el simple argumento de ver a gente mala haciendo cosas malas, sin ningún peso, importancia o siquiera algo de coherencia.
La película es narrada por el fantasma de John Gotti, interpretado por John Travolta con la cabeza cubierta por un distractor trabajo de maquillaje. También es narrada por el Gotti anciano y en prisión hablando con su hijo, que creo que en este punto debería ser adulto pero parece adolescente, tal vez se les fue todo el maquillaje en Travolta. Estos dos narradores saltan sin ningún sentido, ni razón, a lo largo de una historia que también brinca en tiempos de forma abrupta para contarnos cómo Gotti llegó a la cárcel. Supongo que ese es el punto, porque esta serie de eventos ni nos cuenta quién es en su vida privada, cómo escaló al poder y cuál es la razón por la que estamos, de hecho, viendo una película basada en su vida. Véalo así: Gotti es un mafioso genérico, tiene todas las características: es violento, machista, mandón, pero quiere mucho a su familia. Y así va por la vida, le pasan cosas de mafioso genérico, conoce gente que luego muere, etcétera.
“Gotti” se hizo famosa por dos cosas. Uno: por tener un 0% en la página Rotten Tomatoes, es decir, que no existe una sola opinión positiva de ningún crítico cinematográfico que la haya visto. La otra es porque, al ver esta escandalosa recepción, “Gotti” hizo una campaña extraña. Manipuló el porcentaje de aprobación del público en la mencionada página, abrió varias cuentas falsas y dio buena calificación a la cinta, de tal suerte que el porcentaje de la crítica fuera contrastante con el otro. Así lanzó unos comerciales que decían cosas como: “la crítica la odió, el público la amó”, “¿a quién le vas a creer?, a ti o a un troll detrás de un teclado”. Supongo que gracias a esta táctica al menos más de una persona la quiso ir a ver por mera curiosidad. De algo sirvió, pero si digo que manipularon Rotten Tomatoes es porque ahora la calificación del público en esa página ya es tan negativa como la otra. Todo esto pone a la cinta muy cerca de ser la peor que se ha visto a la fecha en 2018.
¿Y sí es tan mala como todos dicen? Lo es. Cuando comenzó la experiencia fílmica de esta historia, si se le puede llamar así porque había al menos personas con cámaras que sabían operar de forma competente para captar lo que ocurría frente a ellos, no creí que fuera para tanto. La gente exagera, me dije, John Travolta no es mal actor, seguro al menos es una historia, aunque no muy buena, con cualidades redimibles. Luego pasaron cinco minutos y comprendí todo. El problema con “Gotti” principalmente es que no sé qué rayos intenta hacer. En pocas palabras, la película no sabe contar una historia, tan sencillo como: este es el inicio, luego ocurrió esto y así terminó. Y no me refiero sólo a la narración que va en tres tiempos: el del fantasma de Gotti, el de el personaje en prisión y la trama lineal, la cual se adelanta como loca, como si alguien presionara un botón y dijera “esto no es interesante”. Quiero decir que lo que ocurre en pantalla son cosas sin el mayor peso o importancia. Pongámoslo así: al inicio se muere uno de sus hijos pequeños atropellado y no existe absolutamente nada para hacernos sentir pena o tristeza por dicho evento.
Que un niño muera ya debería ser un acto triste en sí, pero aquí no lo es.De hecho, ninguna muerte y no sólo se trata de personajes mal construidos, sino de algo tan simple como problemas de edición. Dos amigos de Gotti mueren más adelante: al primero lo vemos hablando en un sillón cuando, ¡boom!, de pronto tenemos una toma de su tumba, así, sin previo aviso. El segundo es más o menos igual, el narrador nos lo dice: “ah y en ese entonces mi amigo se murió”. La película nos dice cosas pero no sentimos nada. ¿Por qué? Precisamente porque las dice y no las muestra, no nos enseña por qué importa lo que se presenta ante nosotros. Si no lo dice la voz de algún Gotti explícitamente, hay escenas de noticieros de la vida real que irrumpen de la nada, sólo porque podían ser usadas. Tan es así que hay personajes importantes que apenas y vemos. Por ejemplo, hay un jefe que a Gotti no le cae bien y creo que sólo aparece en una toma desde lejos, mientras el narrador nos dice “no me cae bien”.
¿Por qué se hizo esta película? Mi respuesta es que se quería hacer un “homenaje” a Scorsese. Algún crítico dijo que es como si alguien hubiera estudiado todas las películas de este director, pero aprendido todo mal. La cinta se presenta de la siguiente forma: Gotti es un mafioso, era muy malo y era genial. El personaje es un estereotipo, recortado y pegado en una trama de crimen y muerte tan simple que se vuelve estúpida. Parece parodia. Lo peor del asunto es que la historia de Gotti podría ser buena. Travolta, si bien aquí no sobresale, está comprometido y bajo otra dirección pudo haber hecho un buen trabajo. Hay una razón por la que los mafiosos son fascinantes, personajes complejos y contradictoriosy Gotti bien podría protagonizar un buen filme. Las escenas reales que vemos lo dejan claro, hay una historia. El punto aquí es tan sencillo como que no se supo contar bien. No hay ni una pizca de complejidad, creo que ni de competencia. Es un pedazo de producción inservible, que ni emociona ni dice nada.
EL DATO
Director: Kevin Connolly
Elenco: John Travolta, Kelly Preston, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Spencer Lofranco, William DeMeo, Victor Gojcaj, Stacy Keach.
Género: Drama
Clasificación: B15
Duración: 110 minutos
Epilog
[dropcap]S[/dropcap]o who's responsible for this mess, this vanity job strutting around as a tribute to Scorsese? This much anticipated but failed comeback vehicle for Travolta?
Well, the director, for one, Kevin Connolly, but he had plenty of help in the scriptwriters, Rossi and Dobbs, and other members of the production team, including the cinematographer (Michael Barrett), who displays some perverse proclivities along the way, although we cannot in good faith blame him entirely as he is after all subject to the director and even the producer's whims, the most notorious of this bunch being perhaps Randall Emmett. But here's the rub, no pun intended, this film, costing (by Hollywood accounting) just $10 million, not exactly a Cleopatra budget, boasts dozens of executive producers, and I mean dozens, in addition to regular "producers" and "co-producers". That in itself is both ludicrous and unheard of, perhaps explaining why the movie lacks any sense of unified artistic vision..What in the world did all these"producers" do? Now, that surely will remain a mystery worthy of the omertá. —PB
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Things to ponder
While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.
Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report