Get Gotti review: Overstuffed and obnoxious, new Netflix series glorifies the Godfather of New York

Such is its naked admiration for the mob boss John Gotti, it makes Martin Scorsese’s you-gotta-give-it-to-him attitude in The Wolf of Wall Street feel like an unambiguous indictment. Multiple talking heads, ranging from former mobsters to high-ranking FBI agents, show up to recount Gotti’s rise up the ranks of the Gambino crime family of New York City, which he assumed control of by assassinating the then-boss, Paul Castellano. Overnight, Gotti became the most feared gangster in the city, and the new Godfather of the family. Over the next half-decade, law enforcement agencies would slit each other’s throats to bring him to justice.

This is the jumping-off point for the series, which recounts Gotti’s four highly-publicised trials, his growing celebrity status, and his ultimate downfall after being ratted on by his longtime consiglieri, a rough-looking guy called Sammy Gravano. Nicknamed The Bull, Sammy now runs a YouTube channel that has over half-a-million subscribers, and hosts a variety of content ranging from music videos to an hourlong interaction with Alec Baldwin in which it is unclear who is interviewing who.

Anyway, what Sammy did to his boss was basically the worst thing that a mobster can do to a member of ‘the family’. Imagine Tom Hagen betraying Michael — or worse, Don Corleone himself. Get Gotti has an ex-goon lay out the unwritten rules of the Mafia in fairly simple terms: “Never go after another made man’s wife, don’t deal drugs, and never cooperate.” Snitches get stitches, but that’s if they’re lucky. In reality, they get killed; their slain bodies left in the streets to set an example for others sitting on the fence about whether to ‘cooperate’ with the authorities. But, the ex-goon clarifies, narcs were never killed outside their homes, because that would be seen as an insult to their wife and kids.

A still from Get Gotti. (Photo: Netflix)

It’s unclear if any (or all) of this is meant to be ironic. Mafia rules are famously broken rather frequently. In fact, Gotti was arrested because multiple ‘wise guys’, in addition to Sammy the Bull, decided to testify against him in court. It was the end of an era; so much for Omertà. But the gravity with which these men narrate the inner workings of the Mafia almost makes it seem as if they aren’t aware they’re on camera, breaking the same rules of which they speak.

The show seems enamoured by the theatricality of it all, however; enough, at least, for it to turn a blind eye to the trail of blood that these men left in their wake. One person actually calls him a ‘Marvel superhero’, while another man can’t hide his admiration when he recalls that at a party one time, Brooke Shields slipped her phone number into Gotti’s pocket. But the Godfather threw it in the trash, mumbling something about the actor being as young as his daughter.

While the show certainly addresses the cost of ambition, that’s practically its only overarching theme. Not nearly enough attention is paid to the cycle of violence that these men were consumed by, the massive tax burden that their activities put on the average citizen, or how they influenced the politics of that era. Instead, Get Gotti would rather serve snackable snippets that a distracted teenager can half-watch on the corner of their screen while scrolling through Instagram. Just as Netflix intended.

Get Gotti
Director – Sebastian Smith
Rating – 2/5