How is Gotti (2018)?

I'll say it's very bad and deserves its 0% Rotten Tomatoes rating. Still, it is a film so misguided in its execution that I couldn't help but watch all the way to the end. It's a perfect lesson for aspiring filmmakers on how not to make a film.

Some of my thoughts:

- The opening credits are some of the longest I've ever seen. This movie must have had like 50 producers!

- Travolta wasn't a bad choice to play Gotti (he's got the presence and looks), but his performance mostly consists of looking constipated and waving his finger a lot. We never feel like this a guy to be feared and respected. I broke out laughing during the scene where all the other mobsters get up in respect.

- The film is so badly-edited and paced. We cut from scenes to a cancer-stricken Gotti in 2002, then randomly flashback to his glory years of the 70's and 80's with no coherent transition. The story drags as a result.

- Pitbull (yes, Pitbull the Latin rapper) did the soundtrack and his songs play in scenes that take place in the 80's! It's just weird to have a rapper do the soundtrack in a film about a mobster who was openly racist and liberally tossed around the word "nigger" and other epithets towards minorities.

- Much of the film consists of Gotti and other indistinguishable goons sitting in darkly-lit rooms talking about who they want to kill, who they don't want to kill and what it takes to make it in life. I guess you can say other mob movies also feature scenes like this, but at least in the first two Godfathers and Goodfellas, they made the mob interactions and meetings entertaining!

- They portray Gotti as a loving husband, father and respected man who provided for his neighborhood. Sure, he might have killed people and ruined lives, but he was still a great man who was unfairly persecuted by the government. Uh huh.

It's awful how the end of the film glorifies him and shows his supporters celebrating him. It kinda reminded me of Trump and his followers!

So yeah, a major cinematic trainwreck.