Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Movie Review: "Gotti" (2018)

Director: Kevin Connolly
Year: 2018
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 45 minutes

The story of the career of notorious gangster John Gotti.
"If I robbed a church and had the steeple stickin' out of my ass, I'd still deny it." (Image Source)
Sure, John Gotti was a murderer, a loan shark, and committed racketeering, but he also helped old ladies with their shopping carts, so we guess that makes it all okay!!1~!!!11!1~ "Gotti" is directed by Kevin Connolly, who has directed movies like "Gardener of Eden" and "Dear Eleanor," but is probably best known as being Eric from "Entourage." It is written by Lem Dobbs, who has written films like "The Score," "Haywire," and "Kafka," and Leo Rossi, who wrote "Mafioso: The Father, The Son." The movie stars John Travolta and one of the most over-the-top Queen's accents you've ever heard as the titular John J. Gotti. This movie attempts to tell the entire truth, a not at all one-sided, in no way fudged story about his rise to power and his eventual arrest after multiple indictments.
"This fuckin' cancer, that is the ultimate 'fuck you.'" (Image Source)
Chances are, even if you're only a casual follower of "Film Twitter," you've heard that a few weeks ago, the marketing team for "Gotti" put out a video following their scathing 0% Rotten Tomatoes score (which remains intact today). Here at Lolo Loves Films, we pride ourselves on telling it like it is and being honest, even if we don't like something. It does us no good to lie in our reviews. We want you, dear readers, to know if you should spend your hard earned cash on something or not. We speak our piece regardless of whatever marketing team chooses to call honest, legitimate negative reviews "written by trolls behind a keyboard."
"We're doin' this for the whole family." (Image Source)
Knowing this, we ain't gonna sugarcoat it for you. "Gotti" feels like it was written and directed by a delusional 12-year-old Gotti fanboy. It's really odd to see a movie portraying a horrible person like John Gotti in such a flattering light. It seems like director Kevin Connolly wants the audience to believe that Gotti wasn't such a bad guy despite that there are two scenes where he literally shoots two people in the back at point-blank range. But don't worry, he left the witnesses alive and he only kills people in "the life!" Ahhhhh, such a good person!! The direction and editing are amateur at best. The look of it is visually uninspiring, and the story is a jumbled mess of fawning adoration and juvenile scriptwriting. It has an incoherent timeline with little indication when actual events are taking place. Many things happen with little rhyme or reason behind them. It's more of a highlight reel of events in Gotti's life. Far too much of the film consists of Gotti and his cohorts sitting around in some dank, dark backroom room doing fuck-all, muttering about the state of nothing, and pointing in people's faces. The story is content to gloss over much of Gotti's very famous but almost entirely ignored criminal history. It mostly showcases the murders that other wise-guys commit, which Connolly hopes will make Gotti more likable since he wasn't killing people who didn't deserve it. The acting is so exaggerated that it's almost funny. We will say the showboat performances are by far the most entertaining thing about this otherwise dreadful bore of a movie. If it weren't for us laughing at John Travolta's resting bitch face or his ridiculous interactions with John Gotti Jr. (Spencer Rocco Lofranco), who looks like he came straight off the set of the "Jersey Shore," this flick would have no entertainment value whatsoever. In fact, the casting director should have hired Ronnie "Ron Ron" Ortiz-Margo himself, he probably would have elevated this circus just a little bit more.
"Never trust anyone who hasn't done time. That's where men are made." (Image Source)
In the end, "Gotti" is an utterly awful movie made by a fanboy trying to convince the audience that a career criminal who did immeasurable harm to others is somehow a decent person. We're not quite sure what convinced MoviePass Ventures to gamble on this movie, but it was a gamble where the only possible payout was a guaranteed trip to swim with the fishes. Them calling bad reviews "fake news" is not surprisingly in the slightest. As a matter of fact, it fits right in line with the themes of this movie because it's almost entirely a work of revisionist history.

My Rating: 2/10
BigJ's Rating: 2/10
IMDB's Rating: ~4.6/10
RT Rating: 0%


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