The Don Is Dead (1973)

Truly Dreadful Film

Fresh and Exciting

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Sigh... I have never been able to sit through the 175 mins of The Godfather something interferes like bed or food or something a little more interesting on the other channel.The 115 min The Don Is Dead on the other hand is/was tailor made for my (gnat like?) attention span. Wish they'd show it some time! I saw this when I was 10 - 12 years old and thought it was great. Loadsa guys talking tough easy to keep track of plot loadsa machine gun action and stuff. Maybe even a good performance or two tho I can't recollect much about it.Wish I could remember better and do a proper synopsis. The mob war erupts when one guy finds out that one of the other family is sleeping with a woman, wife/daughter/girlfriend? After a violent conflict the survivors are gathered together to discuss a peace. I remember Angelo? pointing the informant out to the peacemaker type and saying "he was the only one who had anything to gain". He is then taken out and disposed of, Angelo becomes the new Don. Is this actually worth a spoiler?Is it a rip off? Kinda hard to say seeing as I can't remember one and haven't seen the other lolz - probably! You wanna tell me Godfather is way better I'm not arguing (internet arguments are for idiots anyhow).You wanna watch a mafia movie and only have 2 hours rather than 3 to spare then this is for you.

In his career, movie director Richard Fleischer made some very good movies, "Compulsion" and "The Narrow Margin" being just two of them. However, when he reached the 1970s, though he made a few more good movies ("The Spikes Gang", "Soylent Green") his talent started to decline, and before the decade was over he started to make an unbreakable string of stinkers up to the point he retired in the late 1980s. "The Don Is Dead" was the first sign that in the early 1970s that he was going past his prime. To be fair, it seems that he wasn't given a lavish budget for this movie. The movie is so obviously shot on phony- looking back lots and sets, giving the movie a made-for-TV feeling. (This shabby look may be why music composer Jerry Goldsmith wrote a very television-style musical score for the movie.) And the script is nothing to shout about, having a bunch of mobster-themed plot turns that we've seen many times before. Some of the acting isn't bad - the movie is filled with talented actors, not just Anthony Quinn. But you don't just go to a movie to see good acting, you want an engaging story and characters, which for the most part this movie simply does not have.

I hate the 1970s, and anybody sane must ! This is a movie with a stuff that I'm trying to imagine who could be attracted by?! The direction is TV-ish, with the bad meanings of the term; in other words there is no creativeness or craftsmanship. It's tragic that this is directed by Richard Fleischer; the same man who made once upon a time The Vikings (1958), The Boston Strangler (1968), and Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). Now here's a new characteristic for the 1970s, it makes even the good directors do BAD! Forget about the music, originally I thought there was none, asking myself is it the 1970s realism ?!! But after a while I discovered that (Jerry Goldsmith) himself composed the music to it (I feel no need to repeat the characteristic I just said earlier !). The sets are poor. The drama is a joke; being just a dumb war over a chick (Troy? Even if, this is the weakest of them all !). It goes on boringly because it's nothing but a meaningless thriller, with pure killings and no thrill. The script itself is arithmetical; kill so-and-so, then a response by killing else so-and-so yet from the other side, then kill another so-and-so, to have another so-and-so killed, and so on with the killer killed so-and-sos ! The characters are trivially written; compared to them Donald Duck got interesting psychological dimensions! Everyone was moving like dummies, and talking like robots. (Robert Forster) looks handsome with cool jackets; that's all the good things that I can tell about him here! After notable and so energetic career that includes 3 and 4 films a year, except for his role in (The Marseille Contract), (Anthony Quinn) would be out of job for the next 3 years. Hence (TDID), the only movie he did in 1973, says a lot about how he was having such a big problem working in real movies during the 1970s. No doubt it's one of his worst, if not The Worst ! The effect of (The Godfather) is more than perceptible (2 mob generations, a conflict over power, assassinations' sequences…). However, it's part of the exploitation's wave. Well, the lousy exploitation's wave to be precise. And with having catchy names (like Quinn, Goldsmith and Fleischer) then it is disappointing, deepening the deplorable irony between Hollywood's golden age and its tin one! Save the chilly explosion at the garage, nothing is distinguished, or rather watchable. From a long experience of miserable devoted viewer; in the 1970s all what it took to make a gangster movie was enough guns, fires, blood, added to zero direction, terrible actors, and female nudity. The thing is; after 40 years they still do the same, but as straight-to-video; namely, they became more truthful and explicit. According to the TV quality, the Italian characters, the set in which Forster's character Frank was hiding; this is not a movie, this is Kojack : the lost episode (and it's a low-grade one too). Otherwise, it's long lame massacre of a movie ! I give it just 2 stars; one for (Quinn)'s suits, and the other is for the girl's orange bikini. Finally, my title is just a way to express some anger, since the real idiot wasn't the don; it's ME for wasting nearly 2 hours of my life watching him. Simply, the don is dead, so this movie too !

Charles Cioffi, the consigliere of a jailed Mafia chieftain decides to get a war started among the three Las Vegas crime families. Knowing that Angel Tompkins, singer girlfriend of the son of a recently deceased Mafia Don, is looking for a break, he arranges a meeting with Anthony Quinn, Godfather of the third Mafia family where nature takes its course.When former boyfriend Robert Forster returns to America and finds out it ain't long before the bullets start flying. When the film is over there are only a couple left standing and if you want to know who does pick up all the marbles than watch the film.Of course this film came out to take advantage of the enormous publicity reaped by The Godfather in the previous year. It's an average sort of gangster flick, it could have been done at Warner Brothers during the Thirties with their stable of gangster players.Al Lettieri and Abe Vigoda were both in The Godfather and their presence sort of lends an aura authenticity to the film. Lettieri was just coming into his own as a great portrayer of villains and assorted gangland types. His early death was a real loss to film.Anthony Quinn of course is always good and fans of his which are legion will want to catch The Don is Dead.