GOTTI: John Travolta Is A BadFella

When American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson first aired in 2016, it received near-universal acclaim, with the lion’s share of attention drawn towards the show’s diverse ensemble cast, most of whom received accolades for career-best work. Chief among them was John Travolta as defense attorney Robert Shapiro, the sniveling and irascible member of Simpson’s “Dream Team.”

Offered a rare opportunity to demonstrate his chops on a limited television event series, Travolta made a grand meal of the role, chewing and scowling his way through each and every scene, eventually earning Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his troubles. Whatever one’s opinion may be about the quality of Travolta’s performance, there was no denying how memorable it often was, especially at such a late inning in the veteran actor’s career.

Now, just two years later, Travolta returns to the big screen with Gotti, a true crime biopic charting the rise and fall of New York’s notorious “Teflon Don” himself, John J. Gotti. Perhaps reinvigorated from his supporting turn as Shapiro, a figure embroiled in the world of murder and litigious affairs, Travolta takes center stage as the titular mobster…a figure embroiled in the world of murder and litigious affairs! Okay, so not quite identical, but we still get same shades of what we saw from Travolta in 2016, and in the hands of director Kevin Connolly (better known as “E” from Entourage), they’re the only blips of life in an otherwise flatline of a motion picture.

And therein lies the problem with Gotti: aside from an occasional spark from Travolta (it’s no mystery why he makes up 99% of the film’s marketing), it’s a wholly derivative affair, and under Connolly’s guiding hand, a crudely executed and completely incoherent one at that. Adapting a screenplay from Lem Dobbs and Leo Rossi, Gotti is Connolly’s third effort as a filmmaker, but you wouldn’t know it from watching.

A despicable attempt at hagiography, Connolly wastes whatever little effort he had making a shambolic film about nothing that he ultimately forgets to infuse any real perspective other than “This guy was a badass and we should respect him!” It’s telling that Travolta is easily the best thing about it, but he’s the captain of a sinking ship, and he’ll be damned if the entire thing goes down without him.

A Fractured Structure

“Let me tell you something: New York is the greatest city in the world. My city. I was a kid in the streets, and I made it to the top. This life ends one of two ways: Dead, or in jail. I did both.” Thus begins Gotti, with our humble Don and Narrator, hair neatly slicked back and adorned with a handsome top coat, breaking the fourth wall to address the audience directly (a trite storytelling technique if there ever was one). The film immediately dives into an opening credits sequence, during which Connolly makes the curious choice to plaster it with genuine archive footage of the actual Gotti, effectively destroying the illusion Travolta so carefully attempted to establish moments before.

We then cut to 1973, in which a younger-looking Gotti (Travolta’s face is softened digitally here) is offered the position of an enforcer in the Gambino Family, the crime syndicate he would eventually supplant. Gotti commits his first whack with aplomb, and the film abruptly cuts to the early 2000’s, where Gotti, now cancer-ridden and having served a decade behind bars, is visited by his son, John A. Gotti (Spencer Lofranco, giving the film’s worst performance). Gotti Junior presents his father with a dilemma: as a soldier in his father’s mob, he’s been offered a plea deal, something Gotti Senior vehemently suggests he refuse (“If I robbed a church, and had the steeple sticking out of my ass, I’d still say I didn’t do it!”, he exclaims).

This confrontation between Gotti Senior and Junior (which the movie returns to frequently) and the weight of Junior’s decision should effectively become the emotional crux of the story, offering Connolly plenty of thematic ore to mine from. For instance, what is the value of a legacy? Should a child uphold the legacy of their parents, no matter how criminal that enterprise had been? Can a boy disregard his father’s words and become his own man, even if it means he’ll be forever cast in his father’s shadow?

With plenty of avenues to choose from, Connolly elects to do nothing with these sequences, and Junior’s ultimate decision barely registers on screen, helped in no part by Lofranco’s mopey performance.

Head of the Family

The film eventually circles back to the mid-1970’s, where Gotti’s rise to power is shown in full. As the father of five alongside wife Victoria (played by Travolta’s real-life wife, Kelly Preston), Gotti is depicted as a man fiercely determined to provide for his family, beckoning his children to listen to him and avoid any and all authority figures. He was also a faithful member of the Gambino Family, continuing to loyally serve them even while faced with brief stints in prison, utilizing medical furloughs to sneak away and perform mob hits.

As Gotti’s criminal empire grows, so do the members of his criminal organization, and Connolly seems hell-bent on identifying every last one of them, dropping an inordinate amount of text signifiers on screen to identify names, locations, and time periods. Gotti is loaded with characters, but aside from bit parts from character actors Chris Mulkey and Stacy Keach, not a single one of these goons makes any sort of impression, cast solely for their inherent disposability.

The screenplay by Dobbs and Rossi essentially reads as “Wikipedia: The Movie,” cherry-picking key moments from Gotti’s life and transcribing them for the screen, with Connolly’s pedestrian point-and-shoot approach offering not an ounce of wit or imagination to the proceedings.

A Face Only a Mother Could Love

Poor storytelling is one issue with Gotti; repugnant aesthetics are another. The film is ugly, often deliberately so, favoring steely blues and industrial greys in its color schemes, as mafia business operations are routinely conducted in dingy warehouses and small, low-lit backrooms. Cinematography by Michael Barrett is also on the iffy side, finding plenty of shots reframing and refocusing right in the middle of a take. It’s sloppy work.

There’s also a bizarre soundtrack element to Gotti, and it’s as woefully misguided as the rest of the picture. Apart from one track from Pitbull (who inexplicably scored the rest of the film, and no, I cannot elaborate any further on that, which should speak to the memorability of his involvement), period-appropriate needle drops are deployed throughout, and they become increasingly more hilarious as to how incongruous they are. “Call Me” by Blondie used dietetically in a nightclub? Perfectly fine. Pet Shop Boys’ “West End Girls” kicking in during a car-bombing? Um, okay. The Bangles “Walk Like an Egyptian” playing over Gotti’s walk down a set of courtroom steps, having narrowly escaped conviction in 1987? Haha, alright, stop pulling my leg.

Seriously though, by the time Duran Duran’s “Come Undone” rolls around to underscore the dissolution of Gotti’s empire, you’d be hard-pressed not to dismiss the entire film as a joke. Even when he’s riffing on Scorsese, Connolly’s artistic instincts could not be more wrongheaded.

Gotti: Conclusion

Gotti eventually follows the Don to his grave, chronicling his battle with throat cancer while incarcerated (in perhaps the film’s only true moment of vulnerability, Travolta portrays Gotti with his naturally bald pate in these scenes). Not content to end with his actual demise, the film manages to prattle on for another ten minutes, following Gotti Junior’s legal woes and subsequent news footage of citizens lamenting on Gotti’s passing, hailing him as a modern-day New York Robin Hood.

It’s a shame Connolly didn’t quit while he was behind. All Gotti has going for it is a characteristically energetic Travolta, and without him, it’s dead on arrival.

What do you think? Does John Travolta’s performance do the real John Gotti justice?

Gotti was released in theatres in the U.S. and the UK on June 15.