Gotti
In his review for Marie Antoinette, Roger Ebert wrote about the movie’s anachronistic filmmaking, a decision which rubbed some viewers the wrong way. “No one ever lives as Then; it is always Now,” he said in defense of Sofia Coppola’s choices. It’s something that I routinely apply to whatever I come acrross, but how does that work within the context of mindless hogwash that exists in the dark side of a parallel universe, devoid of reason, cohesion, or even internal logic?
Gotti, a feature effort from Kevin Connelly—yes, Eric from Entourage—seems to be hopelessly stuck eons in the past, and witnessing its bountiful failures is like staring into the sphincter of cinema. It’s the Gigli of gangster movies, something astoundingly incoherent that strikes that fatal balance of boredom and unintentional humor that’s virtually impossible to recommend.
Ostensibly, the film is about infamous New York crime boss John Gotti (John Travolta), as well as his son John Gotti Jr. (Spencer Rocco Lofranco) and wife Victoria (Kelly Preston)—but that’s not the movie that exists here. It stretches its slimy skin from the late ’70s to late oughts with pacing so arhythmic that it’s a wonder the film didn’t die on arrival from heart palpitations, and although it’s 104 minutes, its stoicism lacks any and all emotional core.
It’s funny, too, considering this was a passion project for those involved. (The film entered development about seven and a half years ago.) But just like how the human body replaces each of its cells every seven years, the thought and care originally intended for Gotti seems to have floated away into the ethos. There’s nothing to latch onto in a film completely bereft of insight, and it’s all the worse when its only discernible aspects live and die on genre clichés.
Narratively, Gotti is an absolute catastrophe. It’s framed as a sort of flashback within a flashback—or maybe it’s a flashback adjacent to a flashback. You see, the film opens with Gotti himself in front of the Manhattan Bridge as he recounts the following events from beyond the grave, but believe you me, this is no Sunset Boulevard. In fact, this is just a device that guides itself into another scene that shows Gotti in prison at some point in the mid ’90s, where he recounts his life to his son.
If it sounds confusing, it’s because it is. The film bookends itself with conflicting storytelling devices and abandons them at will, skipping and skidding through over 30 years without giving audiences any visible or empathically based arcs to track. All peripheral characters look exactly the same throughout the film despite having lived over a quarter-century of mafia-fueled manias—the film just gives them a slightly different hairdo every once in a while.
But these showcases of ineptitude aren’t just relegated to the narrative filmmaking itself. The movie is a total eyesore with uneven aesthetics, and cinematographer Michael Barrett (Ted, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) covers different scenes with a variety of sickly greys, yellows, and browns that seem devoid of any visual language. Some shots are smudgy and ugly as if the camera itself had a bad case of cataracts.
Connelly’s direction, however, is a much greater offender: the ways he sets up and shoots even the most basic of scenes are difficult to follow and generally awkward from a spatial perspective. Eye lines often don’t match up, reverse shots seem too obviously cheated, and all the while, I began to feel as if the theater walls were closing in around me. The end results are subtlety nauseating whether Connelly and Barrett are shooting an assassination in the streets or a bedtime scene between father and child.
It isn’t as if the performances provide for any distraction from Gotti‘s insurmountable problems, either, as Travolta’s lead performance feels like an impersonation of Donald Trump while dying of smoke inhalation and excess Nutella consumption. The actor’s work here is caricaturesque at best and risible at worst, and Jim Flynn’s (The Other Woman) editing simply exacerbates his interplay with other performers. Preston and her über-fluffy wig seem the most emblematic of the film’s aspirations, but Connolly’s direction drags her so far into needless eccentricity that her efforts end up feeling more parodical than earnest.
And that’s what Gotti feels like as a whole. It’s an unmitigated disaster that’s possibly even worse than you’ve heard, and although that might excite connoisseurs of trash cinema, the experience is also too dull and distracting to enjoy ironically. With every on-the-nose music cue, original Pitbull song, and unfathomable storytelling choice, Kevin Connelly’s work here might be something to behold only for the more masochistic of audiences. I would usually commend the filmmakers in question for at least trying, but I don’t know if they did that here. But what do I know—I’m just a troll behind a keyboard.
About the Author: Matt Cipolla
Writer and film critic for hire who has worked with Kino Lorber Studio Classics, WGN Radio, Bright Wall/Dark Room, RogerEbert.com, The Spool, and more. Firmly believes that ".gif" is pronounced "jiff." 
