You won't be disappointed!

the audience applauded

good back-story, and good acting

Brilliant and touching

This HBO production documents the rise and fall of John Gotti, portrayed by Armand Assante. A decent gangster flick, populated by the usual suspects of the genre.The movie paints Gotti as an old style gangster who refuses to play by the rules, which is what brings him to the top and then brings him crashing back down. The movie rolls along well until the Castellano hit, but as Gotti rises to the top of his family, some cracks in the plot begin to appear.Perhaps due to being spoiled by the drawn out plots of the Sopranos, I found the dissension that breaks up the family in the second half to be rushed. The characters turn on each other because that's how it went in real life. On the other hand, we are dealing with multiple murderers, so asking for deep reasons for them to kill each other may be asking too much.Unlike the protagonists in other mob movies, I did not find myself liking Gotti too much. The media image of Gotti was of a smiling gangster, and you could see a lot of his charisma. Assante does not give off the same sort of charisma, so my attitude towards him was rather lukewarm at best. I'm not sure who would have made a better Gotti, but to me the casting of the title role in this one ultimately relegated this movie to mediocrity.Overall a decent flick, and its fun to see the regular crew of mob actors assemble for yet another go, but it adds nothing new to the genre.

A superb performance by Armand Assante as Gotti.A fast-paced exploration of the Gambino crine family of New York. The film focuses on the violent aspect of organized crime and the police operations to fight it and bring John Gotti to justice. This fact based drama is a powerful,disturbing saga of the Mafia in America. It is a tale of a iron willed Capo who later became the most powerful leader in American mob history. Gotti chose to live and die by the gun in order to reap vast fortunes and personal power,and of the plots they weave in the course of turning crime into a business.

Having seen half a dozen documentaries on John Gotti, I found this movie to be very good overall. Armand Assante is pretty convincing as Gotti and seems to capture his legendary temper effectively. Anthony Quinn manages to LOOK similar to Neil Dellacroce, Gotti's "mentor." The only thing that seems to suffer is that he is (potential spoiler) hamstrung by a lot of "prose-like" dialogue that would never have come out of the mouth of the real Mr. Neil. By all accounts, even the toughest of street thugs were terrified of this man in real life.The "lectures" he gives on mob policy come off a bit stagey for somebody who was a truly scary tough-guy. The guy who plays "Big Paul" is totally miscast. Big Paul was tall and tried to be refined, at least in public. He was not 400 pounds!!! (Potential Spoilers within) The movie starts out fairly true to all accounts of the story of Gotti, but has some mistakes as far as the rankings and duties of some of the key players within the Gambino family. It also suffers from the task of having to condense nearly 25 years worth of stuff into two hours. With all of these quibbles, you might be inclined to think I did not enjoy the film. On the contrary, I think it is VERY watchable and quite entertaining. There are many high points to GOTTI, even if they came at the expense of "bending the facts" a bit. If you haven't done your homework, this story is pretty convincing.Rating: 8 out of 10

"Gotti" is the TRUE STORY about the notorious rise and fall of mobster, John Gotti. As a student of organized crime history, I can honestly tell you, that this movie gives you MAJOR insight into the life of John Gotti. Was he a good guy who took care of his people or a vicious bad guy?. For those who don't know, John Gotti, became very early a legend on the streets of New York City. He became a made man of the Gambino family in the early 70's. Gotti made a lot of money for the family and he quickly earned the trust of his boss, Carlo Gambino. The movie starts by showing, how Gotti seemed to have problems following [the mafia] rules at first and almost gets killed. This sets the movie very well off and gives us a better insight in, not only Gottis life, but the mafia and how they see it. Sort of like GoodFellas, but only that was the Lucchese family. The Gambino family has a alot more history and a family that was originally started by Lucky Luciano in 1931. Armand Assante who plays Gotti makes an outstanding performance here and really triggers the movies atmosphere. Anthony Quinn who plays mob kingpin Neil Dellacroce, Gottis mentor, does a wonderful job. His presence is absolute stellar. GoodFella, Frank Vincent and Bill Forsythe do a great job too. This is not a movie, this is a tv movie done by HBO and it's a rare thing to see a good tv movie these days. The director of this film, Robert Harmon, sure knows what he is up to here!!. If you liked GoodFellas, Casino and The Godfather movies then I would really recommend you to see this one.