Gotti fails to raise a pulse

DISAPPOINTING: JOHN TRAVOLTA MAKES A MESS OF IT

It’s a chaotic production, jumping back and forth through the crime boss’s life.

Gotti is a sloppy biopic of New York crime boss John Gotti, with John Travolta making a mess of it as the complex title character.

He desperately tries to navigate his way through tons of terrible make-up, a variety of wigs and some shocking screenwriting to inject some form of life into a dead body – but fails to raise a pulse.

It’s a chaotic production, jumping back and forth through Gotti’s violent life and, at the end of it all, the viewer is none the wiser.

At the beginning the “Teflon Don”, as he was known, informs viewers that life ends one of two ways. Dead, or in jail, and he did both.

This Kevin Connelly-directed endurance test has few redeeming features. There is real drama in this tale of the dapper mobster who became a media sensation. He swept all before him as he advanced from enforcer for New York’s powerful Gambino crime family to becoming its ruthless boss.

He did a lot of depraved things in his time, but the movie fails to depict these aspects with any depth of conviction.

In 1992, he was convicted on five murders, conspiracy to commit murder, racketeering, obstruction of justice, tax evasion, illegal gambling, extortion and loan-sharking.

He survived for 10 years before succumbing to throat cancer at the United States Medical Centre for Federal Prisoners in Springfield,

Missouri.

The material for the production comes from the self-published memoir by John Gotti Jnr, played by the flailing Spencer Rocco Lofranco. He is much like his father and he paints a rose-coloured image of Gotti that doesn’t ring true.

It helps to know the many characters in the American underworld who connected with John Gotti. Most South African audiences won’t know and, most importantly, won’t care.