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Witness to the Mob
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by Vidmark / Trimark
Sales Rank: 22724
Price: $9.99
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I just bought the DVD but they () cut the best line from the DVD! The scene where they shoot Johnny Keys - right after they shoot him they walk away and one of the crew comments "That's a shame" and everyone thinks it's because they had to kill a guy they respected - but then he says "those shoes are going to keep me up all night." It was great irony! WHY DID THEY CUT THAT LINE FROM THE DVD???????!!!!!!!!!! It is still a great movie!
Viewer Reviews
"Witness To The Mob" is a fairly accurate portrayal of the dirty, evil, and horrific world of organized crime--along with the strange loyalties and demented codependent dynamics which keep it spinning while everything slowly collapses.
Nicholas Turturro does a pretty good job of playing Mafia enforcer Sammy "The Bull" Gravano but occasionally borders on exaggeration with the swaggering, arrogance, and machismo that informs his every movement. It is likely that Gravano probably thought very highly of himself within the deranged prism of a mobster's psyche.
Around the time this film was released, John Gotti was already in Marion Prison in Illinois and Sammy was playing the reformed murderer in Arizona.
That wouldn't last long, as King Scumbag ended up dragging his entire family (including his son Gerard) into a drug ring while in Witness Protection: perhaps the ultimate f**k you to the FBI, an act of lawlessness greater than anything he could have accomplished while still a stand up guy. Everyone was still curious about how the Gambino crime family remained so powerful even after the devastating blows dealt to all five crime families in the 1970's. John Gotti had been a figure in the public eye and despite his imprisonment, the swashbuckling antics he displayed beating case after case still had a grip on the public imagination.
As portrayed in this film Gravano's every move puzzled the FBI and made it harder for them to finally send all these guys to jail, including Gotti. Nothing could be further from the truth. People were dying all over the place by the time the Ravenite Social Club was subject to its last sting and he wasn't the criminal genius he's painted as in this movie. Nicholas Turturro met Gravano during production (this guy commits 19 murders and he's consulting on the movie set of his cinematic autobiography with the actor playing him), so that might have something to do with the attempts to make him look a little remorseful here, passionately loyal there, etc.
Still, it does reality some justice; we see how the bloodthirsty "Bull" urged John Gotti on to authorize more and more hits, inspiring more and more bloodshed. Tom Sizemore does a great job as the Teflon Don: a stone cold criminal who gets caught up in his own celebrity, eventually leading to his downfall. Gravano is so unrepentant in his rampages that he actually helps facilitate the death of wife's brother because he had a cocaine addiction.
The scenes with Paul Castellano are hilarious. They look less like mafia meetings than an adult Boy Scout Reunion with a lot of hotheads. Whoever played him shouldn't have. In these films you can't quite favor anyone because all of them are hollow psychopaths; after watching this film, though, I choose John Gotti over Sammy Gravano. At least within the twisted ethics of the mob Gotti was true to form and remained in his cell, while Gravano ran to Arizona and then did more evil--destroying not only his own life but his family's as well.
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Witness to the Mob
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