The Valachi Papers (1972)

Waste of time

Highly Overrated But Still Good

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

The gangster Joseph "Joe" Valachi (Charles Bronson) has worked for the Mafia for more than thirty years in New York. When he has been imprisoned for fifteen years, he learns that the mobster Don Vito Genovese (Lino Ventura) is offering a reward for his life. Without any alternative other than stay in the solitaire, he accepts the DA offer of protection. In return, he has to disclose the secrets of the Cosa Nostra."The Valachi Papers" is based on a true story and tells the rise and fall of a gangster from the Mafia. The role of Joseph Valachi is tailored for Charles Bronson and fans of gangster movie will certainly enjoy this film. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "O Segredo da Cosanostra" ("The Secret of the Cosanostra")

"No fancy Hollywood hot-shots need apply for screen tests here", or so my audition sign would read back in the day when this was being filmed. A totally stark, un-gussied, realistic look into the sequences of events surrounding a mobster's life, with all the subtlety of a 3- day old, 30-lb. catfish on a fine linen tablecloth. The actors hired for this gig were probably hit men, dope dealers, pimps, etc. themselves. If not, they looked as close as you can get to the real thing. Dino D. and Terence Young got the local European flavor to carry this tour-de-force to its maximum impact, with terse, punctuated dialog. We've seen the Bronson duo (Bronson & Jill Ireland) and Gerald O'Loughlin before, but that's about it for familiar faces. The good part is that everyone blends in.But it's the finely tuned narrative and banter between O' Lough. and Chas. B. that really sets this movie up: Their initial combative interplay, the psychological arm-wrestling regarding the spilling of the goods and the eventual delineation of years of mob activities keeps the metaphorical ball rolling. The eventual bond that develops between the snitch and the cop is neither rushed nor over emotionalized, as it too follows the same slowly brewed pace as the story line itself. You really feel the developed bonding of those two principals as the movie draws to its conclusion, punctuated by Riz Ortolani's lush score in 3/4 time and accentuated by the fact that both had been had!

Charles Bronson starts to break out of spaghetti westerns and good character roles and becomes a leading man around the time The Valachi Papers came out. It was a big milestone in his career, playing the most famous gangster stoolie of all.It's not quite true that all Valachi's testimony managed to do was get a lot of high television ratings for some re-election hungry Senators. Not that they didn't get it and didn't appreciate the side benefits of those famous televised hearings, but eventually what came out of the Valachi hearings was the RICO law which has in fact put quite a dent into organized crime.The Valachi Papers has Charles Bronson telling FBI man Gerald S. O'Loughlin about his life and times in organized crime with La Cosa Nostra from the days of the Marranzano-Masseria wars until the present which would have been 1962. He doesn't really tell anything new to them, basically he confirms what had been gangster legend about the circumstances of many a demise. But with some hard documentation now, new laws are created to meet the problem.Bronson does his best with Valachi, but the story has him pretty one dimensional. It's far from The Godfather where you really get inside the characters of the fictional Corleone family. Bronson sure has no conscience about what he did and I'm sure the real Valachi didn't either. In fact the only reason he turns informer is that Vito Genovese already mistakenly has him down as one.Fans of the gangster genre and Charles Bronson should give this one a look. Others should see The Godfather all three parts.

I watched the movie on demand on cable and its amazing that the Valachi Papers was released nearly within a 6 month time span of the Godfather; both films could not be further apart in the spectrum. Bronson was all wrong for the part; the forced accents from all of the principals made it look and sound more like a skit from Saturday Night Live. It was just plain horrible. It was as if they were just trying to cover a time line as if they were doing a documentary. When you watch it, its presentation comes off dated, like a low budget 1950s style movie. The music is heavy and melodramatic. This film should be remade with a director who can take his time and with writers who will work up a screenplay befitting this amazing story. I mean before Joe Valachis testimony, very few people knew the workings of La Cosa Nostra and it was years before J Edgar Hoover even admitted there was organized crime.