Bonanno: A Godfather's Story (1999)

Self Serving Mush
As a movie this wasn't bad (except for the worst performance I've ever seen by Martin Landau). Never having seen the original I can't comment on how it differs from the longer version, but the editing was ok & the story flowed & made sense.
What was disturbing was the self-serving narrative taken from Bonanno's writing, that portrays him as a sensitive, honorable, decent, patriotic, religious & family man, whose was basically a businessman running the family business. There is nowhere any willingness to fess up to what he really was: a thug.
The movie did give interesting insights into the real-life of the mafia.

I feel ripped off!
I saw the movie when it originally aired on showtime. I recorded the movie then and was excited when it was released for sale. When I watched the store released movie I noticed that the running minutes is two hours and twenty minutes. THATS WRONG! The originally aired "Bonanno: A Godfather's Story" was almost or exactly five hours long. They cut out two and a half hours of important moments of Joseph Bononno's life. I feel cheated and disappointed that someone allowed this to happen to someones biography. I like mafia movies and I thought this was a good one.

The Mobs' role in Kennedy's election is fact...the movie
and Joe Kennedy's creation of the family fortune thru bootlegging and stock swindling is no longer even disputed. Even members of the Kennedy family no longer dispute that the family fortune is based on crime--specifically drug smuggling.

And, Joe Kennedy himself later admitted, as frist chairman of the SEC, he outlawed many of the (stock swindling) tactics he'd used to get rich at small investor's expense.

We also know that the only reason Jack Kennedy won the crucial W. VA primary in '60 was because of Sam Giancana's help in rigging the primary.

These facts are not any longer in dispute--nor are the stories about dead people voting in Chicago in their thousands.

This movie exaggerated Bonnano's role at the expense of the true "capo di capi", Sam Giancana. He is the character upon Michael Coreleone's of "The Godfather" series is based upon. He was the one who ordered Kennedy's hit.

He was also found with five .22 caliber bullets in his back--of the same type frequently used by CIA, ah, shall we call them button men?

The movie is long and dull and not very interesting; the Liberals farcical denials of historical fact are more interesting.

The real story of the Mafia and how they bought the Presidency (as his tangenitally detailed in the "Rat Pack" with Ray Liotta and Don Cheadle a few years back) is far more interesting than this run of the mill TV mini-series. Even the talents of Landau, Olmos, et al can't save this from the worst of all fates for art: mediocrity.