Witness to the Mob (1998)

The Age of Commercialism

Fantastic!

Absolutely brilliant

The acting in this movie is really good.

Where do i start.. this is like the Expendables of gangster actors and a true gem. there's not many mob films that i do not own, after seeing Getting Gotti and Gotti this beats them both mainly because of the great cast and Tom Sizemores performance. from Frank Vincent to Frankie Vally this movie has them all. Sopranos, Goodfellas, Casino, Gotti, Godfather, Once upon a time in America yes this epic has them all, this is one of my favourite mob movies with good reason..It never gets tiresome its strictly gangster all the way, some great dialogue and visual shots. you just know they had lots of fun making this. Tuturro as Sammy Gravano is the best ever, very convincing and and a tough guy who means business. best line in the movie is "the next time you break a rule you go"....Big Paul Costallano

Boss of Bosses told us the story of Paul Castalano, Gotti profiled the Dapper Don, and finally Witness To The Mob is the story of mob enforcer, Sammy "The Bull" Gravano. Unlike the other two films, for some inexplicable reason, Witness To The Mob was made for network television. While the film turned out to be very accurate, it was also twice as long as the other two and lacked the typical violence associated with a mafia movie. Sammy Gravano was John Gotti's second in charge, an enforcer, who eventually turned states evidence and testified against the Mob. He was an interesting guy, but should his bio film really be longer and more in depth than that of John Gotti's? NYPD Blue's Nicholas Turturro stars and while his performance didn't blow me away, he wasn't nearly as bad as I thought he would be. The story is further given credibility by it's supporting cast, which is the same people you've seen in every mafia movie since the late 80s. There were actually seven members of the Sopranos cast, who had some type of part in this film. It's not surprising, as some guys just have the right look and do mafia type films almost exclusively. Witness To The Mob is very accurate and has the typical large cast associated with these films, but being over three hours long and made for TV, really hurts a film like this. You can make the case that the language and violence aren't really necessary to the story, but I really felt like it took a lot of credibility away from the film. How believable is a gangster that constantly says "freaking?" It was interesting to see things from The Bull's point of view, but the producers of this film really should have held out for a cable or direct to video deal, in order to make this type of film what it should be, raw and emotional.

Witness to the Mob does have that "made for TV" look and feel to it simply because of the movie's length (approximately 3 hours) and because it is presented as more of an autobiography/history of the New York mafia in the 1980's and early 1990's. than as a fictional action movie. I was impressed with both Nicholas Turturro's portrayal of Sammy the Bull Gravano and with Tom Sizemore's portrayal of John Gotti. When you consider the murder and mayhem caused by these two criminals over the 20 year period that they were involved with organized crime, then one would expect that consolidating the historical events of the 19 murders associated with Sammy the Bull Gravano would be filtered several times over. Even with the limited time (3 hours or so) provided by the screening of Witness to the Mob the movie was quite impressive with factually presenting the life and times of Sammy the Bull Gravano. Debi Mazar played Sammy's faithful and loving wife and Michael Imperioli played Sammy's child hood friend. Through time and sequence of events we get to understand why Sammy eventually needs to silence forever both his childhood friend and also his own brother in law. We do see the distinct contrast between John Gotti's flamboyant lifestyle and Sammy's more disciplined belief in the Costa Nostra and his loyalty and devotion to his mafia family comes before his own family.All in all, kudos to the director Thaddeus O'Sullivan for drawing out the characters lifestyles and historical events of the New York mafia for a television audience. I give full marks to Nicholas Turturro and Tom Sizemore for their great performances as two of the most cruel and vicious criminals who eventually turn on one another to save their own skin. The movie provides good insight in to the personality of Sammy the Bull and why he did turn on his mafia family, because he eventually realized that Paul Castellano the boss of bosses, and John Gotti who took Paul out to become the new mob boss, there is no real honor and/or family within the mafia, only power and greed.This is a good history of the New York mafia "that you should not refuse watching" for a made for TV movie.

This movie is based on the true story of "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, a self-confessed killer who helps prosecute Mafia boss John Gotti, in exchange for immunity. Yes, the acting is a bit wooden, and the script full of cliches, but it's an interesting study of a real life Mafia case - definitely worth a look, but certainly not a classic.