The first mistake is right before the opening credits, having Travolta, in character and defiant, address the camera directly - “This life ends one of two ways, dead or in prison. Kevin Connolly, who finished “Entourage” with the thought, “I want to direct,” finds this feature way beyond his grasp, creating a muddled movie that cannot find the balance between lionizing Gotti as a “Robin Hood,” a man of honor and fierce family devotion, recognizing that whatever New Yorkers chose to see in him, and the brutally simple fact that he was a murderous, overdressed psychopath, a well-dressed mug and a thug. But chances are, you don’t, no matter how many headlines you read or how many vowels are in your last name.
You might remember “The Chin,” and “The Bull” and “Gaspipe” and all the Gambinos, Rosellis, Bilottis, DiCiccos, Ruggieros, Castellanos, Cassos and Boriellos involved in one of the noisiest and bloodiests eras in “La Cosa Nostra” history. Seriously, if you didn’t live through this “Teflon Don” era in New York crime and crime headlines, keeping track of the flaccid, choppy and anecdotal flow of the story is nigh on impossible. The tone, direction and crack-addict editing all let him down. But Travolta delivers what there is to deliver. The script isn’t great, the production values New York seamy and there are a couple of supporting players who act well enough to belong here. The best one can say for his newest attempt at returning to relevance, “Gotti,” which staggered onto the big screen this month after months of delays, distributors chickening out, etc., is that he should have stuck to TV.
He was too tall for the part, but he brought pride, vanity and vulnerability to Shapiro and won kudos for doing it. John Travolta began his latest “comeback” with TV’s “American Crime Story,” playing the canny, dapper, eventually out-of-the-loop defense attorney Robert Shapiro in the O.J.
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