The Don Is Dead (1973)

OK, so i saw maybe only half an hour of it in the middle, and after the first five minutes, most of that was like staring at a train wreck. a ripoff that took advantage of the godfather fever back in 70's and probably took 10 days to make. even the guy who played 'salazzo' in the G-F cashed in on this one. i didn't see any abe vigoda scenes thankfully. the acting was so bad i don't even think they took more than one take in any scene. the characters were wooden , the accents were laughable, the dialog hopeless, and i think the sets were borrowed from 'chico and the man'. movies like these are why people make fun of the 70's.

**SPOILERS** With the terrible news of his father Mafia Don Poleiro Regalbuto sudden death young Frankie, Robert Foster, feels that the weight of the world was put on his shoulders and doesn't know if he could handle it. At a big Mafia conference in Las Vages the three mob families decide that all of the late Don Poleiro's operations should be put in the hands of his friend and fellow Mafia Kingpin Don Angelo Dimorra, Anthony Quinn, with Frankie being thought the ropes by him until he can do the job as a Mafia Don himself.There's foul play and treachery afoot with the greedy and back-stabbing mob Cosiglieri, Luigi Orlando, Charles Cioff, planing to use his recruited out-of-state hit men to start a bloody mob war between the three Vages Mafia families. Then, after the dust settles,Luigi plans to take over the entire Mafia operations in the city that's worth well over a billion dollars.Luigi get's his chance to get the war between the Mafia families started when he manipulated young Frankie into a feud with his new adopted father Don Angelo. Lugie starts a rumor that the fatherly Don was having an affair with Frankies girlfriend nightclub singer Ruby Dunne, Anglel Tompkins, this results in Ruby getting almost beaten to death by an outraged Frankie. Lugie's trickery also leads to Don Angelo sending out a hit team to knock off the love-crazed and unstable hood. The Don's brother and family Consiglieri Mitch, Louis Zorich, tries to talk his hot-headed brother out of it but not after the hit men gunned down Frankie's dad, the late Don Poleiro,Consigieri Vito Netherbourne, George Skaff.With a full-scale mob war now about to explode Frankie get's help from the Fargo brothers hit men for hire Tony & Vince, Frederic Forrest & Al Letteri. This causes so much damage to Don Angelo's mob empire, including the murder of his brother Mitch, that it lands him in a wheel chair after suffering a heart-attack and near-fatal stroke. The mob war really escalates when Don Angelo's boys trick Frankie and Vince into going to a meeting of the minds in a downtown Vages diner this results in a violent gun battle with Vince being gunned down. Tony then pulls out all stops and sends his men, the former Don Poleiro mob, out for blood that results in dozens of Don Angelo's men getting shot knifed slashed and, together with Don Angelo's legitimate business establishment, blown up.Frankie escaping to Italy is later set up in a trap where he's blown away but his fellow mobsters for his insane actions. This resulted in almost the entire mobs lucrative operations in Las Vages being blown to hell. It's not until Don Bernardo, John Duke Russo, is prematurely released from prison that the truth about Liugi's perfidy came to light from non-other then his abused wife, and Bernardo's secret lover, Marie, Jo Anne Meredith. Luigi now exposed by both Tony Fargo and Don Bernardo as the rat-fink that he is finally, together with Marie, get's everything that coming to him. Tony Fargo who at first wanted out of the world of crime ends up together with Don Bernardo as the top two Mafia hoods who have complete control of the city of Las Vages with it's billions in it's annual take of legitimate gambling dollars. Not that bad of a "Godfather" clone that was unfairly put down for trying to imitate "The Godfather" but is a pretty good film all by itself. Where some thirty years later it's almost forgotten and unknown to the movie-going public.

"The Don Is Dead" is clearly an attempt to cash in on the success of "The Godfather" which was made the previous year. Very few people regard "The Don Is Dead" as a great movie, but many admire "The Godfather" enormously. (There are also many who do not, particularly fans of gangster films in general. Their attitude was brilliantly summarised by Ian Cameron in his book "The Gangster Film" where he described "The Godfather" as "built to be the "Gone With The Wind" of the crime genre, which is to say a crime movie for people who despise crime movies but are impressed by gigantic, best selling novels, a movie for people who do not even much like movies.") "The Don Is Dead" borrows from "The Godfather" the central theme of a younger, less forceful, less impressive brother maturing during a crisis and developing both leadership qualities and murderous ruthlessness. It also borrows the carefully explained structure of the crime family with its leader (the Don) and its adviser. Fortunately, "The Don Is Dead" takes nothing else from "The Godfather". It does not aspire to be a "Gone With The Wind" of gangster movies. It is content to be an enjoyable, fast-moving well-made crime film. "The Don Is Dead" was made by a team of top Hollywood professionals, and their expertise is evident throughout.In a city dominated by three crime families, the adviser of one hatches a scheme to grab control of the city by setting the other crime families against each other. For a time his plan works well, and gang warfare breaks out. One of the family heads is dependant on two brothers who kill for him. The younger of these brothers is reluctant to participate but is more intelligent than both his brother and his friend, the crime Don. Gradually, as the violence accelerates, the younger brother assumes command.The pacing of "The Don Is Dead" is excellent. Each scene is tightly cut but nothing is rushed. Whether an action scene or a whispered conversation, everything is given as much time as necessary but nothing more. The shootings and bombings - of which there are many - are done properly: in other words quickly but credibly. Neither John Woo-style ludicrously fast cutting nor Sam Packinpah-type slow motion diminish "The Don Is Dead".With one exception, the acting is good throughout. It was enjoyable to see Anthony Quinn in a modern role and wearing smart city clothes. Quinn, of course, has enormous power on screen, but so too have some of the actors in supporting roles. The exception is Frederic Forrest who has neither the acting skill nor the screen charisma adequately to flesh out the main role of the younger brother. He is further hampered by his whining voice. Throughout he gives the impression of being weak and petulant. A key scene is when he returns to his base which has been bombed in his absence and learns that his brother has been killed. His men are about to quit. After a moment or two of private grief, he shouts at his men that they will strike back, and restores their self-confidence and determination. Actors like Charlton Heston and George C. Scott could have worked miracles with that material, but Frederic Forrest just stands there and whines. It is difficult to imagine any hardened criminal regarding him as a leader.The cinematography is excellent, and Richard H. Kline deserves congratulation for creating in a colour movie the chiaroscuros traditionally found in black and white crime films of the 1940s. Jerry Goldsmith provides an atmospheric, low-key score which consistently increases the tension. During his career Richard Fleischer never received due credit for being a brilliant director, probably for the same reason that Michael Curtiz, John Huston and Robert Wise did not: he was versatile and made a wide variety of movies instead of working with the same subject matter again and again. In his staging and pacing of scenes, his handling of the actors - with that one exception - his placement of the camera and in the high quality work he elicited from his crew, Fleischer demonstrates in "The Don Is Dead" that he was a master film director."The Don Is Dead" is probably not a film for every-one, but any-one who likes a good gangster movie should make a point of seeing it.

Like quite a few other of the 70's crime dramas that were not classics, but still of more grit and consequence than many of those churned out in the last two decades, this interestingly plotted mob film is a frustrating mix of a really good scene or two followed by a painfully predictable and badly presented one. Anthony Quinn is top billed but largely wasted as the boss whose romantic liaison triggers a war of wills and weapons with some headstrong younger members (led by Robert Forster, Frederic Forrest and Al Lettieri.) Some good action scenes follow, but, like the rest of the film, some of them are quite impressive while others fall flat. A mixed bag, not often seen but worth watching, with limited expectations.