John Travolta steps into the shoes of the notorious mafia boss John Gotti, as the self-titled biographical drama documents three decades that saw the 'Teflon Don' rise from a life of petty troublemaker to the head of one of the most powerful crime families in the world.
The film is set to reveal the relationship of a father who lived and died by the mob code, and a son who, while brought up to lead a life of crime, chose to leave that world behind and redeem himself and the Gotti name.
Never before has there been such an inside look at the Gotti family and their world of danger, tragedies, betrayal and redemption.
After conspiring to the ‘eliminate’ the previous boss in late 1985, John Gotti became head of the Gambino crime family in January 1986, which in its time was the largest, richest, and most powerful crime organisation in the country.
Known as the ‘Dapper Don’ due to his flamboyant style and outspoken personality he became one of the most famous mobsters of the 20th century as he ruled the New York underworld. He later became known as the ‘Teflon Don’ as despite numerous court trials for a collection of crimes including murder, racketeering, and assault, the prosecution could never get anything to stick on him, and he always walked free.
He was eventually convicted on charges of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, loansharking, racketeering, obstruction of justice, illegal gambling, and tax evasion, after his underboss turned against him and testified, and died of cancer in 2002 whilst serving his life sentence.
Whilst alive in prison he continued to run the empire, using his son to relay orders, until he too was imprisoned in 1999, much to fury of Gotti’s wife, who until that point had been unaware of her son’s involvement.
This film documents all this plus much more.
This film is unusual as it features a real life husband, wife, and daughter playing exactly that on screen, with Travolta’s wife Kelly Preston playing Victoria Gotti, and their daughter Ella Beau Travolta playing their daughter Angel Gotti.
Other unusual facts from the film were that Travolta actually wore many of John Gotti’s clothing accessories in this film, including ties, and a lot of the cars that you see in the film actually belong to Travolta himself.
With no official UK release date yet, we can only presume that it is going to have the same one as the US, which is December 15th, but for now check out the trailer below.