Getting Gotti

This is really the dumbest, most offensive Canadian made for tv feeling piece of garbage I have seen in a long time.

I seriously wonder how anyone was sucked into this. Anthony John Denison is a real actor, which he proved during Crime Story. Here, he is lost in some kind of schlock that came out in the same year as The Bell Curve, and it shows. Racist, offensive, ignorant of boardroom culture or police procedure, filled with error. James Henerson should be immolated on a pile of his own manuscripts. Fortunately, "Getting Gotti" (1994), was followed in 1996 by another tv movie, "Gotti", with Armand Assante, which avoids most of the pitfalls of this atrocity, if you need your fill with mob drama, see Donnie Brasco, it's tv series "Falcone", or even The Godfather I and II if you're feeling nostalgic.

Avoid like the plague.

I feel bad for Lorraine Bracco, she goes from a memorable performance in Goodfellas to this crap! As soon as it started I knew it was gonna be bad.

Lorraine Bracco spends about twenty years of her prosecutorial career trying to take down the Gambino crime family, and John Gotti, who dominates her neighborhood of Ozone Park.

I have a friend who grew lived as a child in Ozone Park in the 1970s and 1980s, and everyone knew what was going on, but could do nothing about it. This 'view from the top' movie shows Miss Bracco in conference with dozens of old, fat government men, and finally at trial. The production tries to keep a cold tone, despite occasionally swooping camera shots in the court room and dark organ music, but the result is that it looks like a superficial effort, concentrating more on showing Miss Bracco as tightly wound than on anything that seems to bear on the actual issues. There is no effort made to make clear the impact of these crimes; a man who runs a fruit store complains of paying protection; a thief who comes to Tony Denison, who plays Gotti, with a cut that's not large enough, is beaten; but there's no overt showing of harm to the public, just an impassioned speech by Miss Bracco in which she complains that people think of Gotti when it comes to Italians, and not Verdi.

I know that Lorraine Bracco is supposed to be giving a "gutsy" performance in this but overall, all she does is stomp around the screen and shout at people. It's almost laughable at times.

I also got confused at the first part of the movie, Lorraine Bracco's character shows up for work on her first day in the DA's office and in the next scene two years have gone past.

The rest of the movie isn't actually that bad, It's not factual or anything but it is interesting to get a view in the mafia and legal worlds. It's a shame that Lorraine Bracco ruins the movie with her awful performance.

Watched it on encore's "true stories" channel... that's exactly what this movie is... A STORY! Events that transpired in the movie conflict with every book I've read on Gotti/Castellano/the Gambino crime family... (and I've read every one I could get my hands on...) It was a decent movie, but should not be billed as "factual", thus it received from me a low (4) vote.

(Castellano never attended Delacroce's funeral... Gotti was not pursued so eagerly until after Castellano's murder... relationship as depicted between Gotti and Gravano before murder @ Sparks did not exist...)