This is not a true story! It's a fairytale about John Gotti!

Yeah they f#cked up in the movie there are a lot of factual errors, and the meeting with the black leader in jail never happened.

"Where's the strong box you f!!kin' varmint, you?"

Favara - never found crushed in an auto yard compacter or in a barrel somewhere in the river.

Gotti - Never met Sammy at Don Carlo's house.

Paul Castellano - Tall and slim

Aniello Dellacroce - Was a lot more fierce than depicted in the movie, and
in real life Paul was afraid of him even though he was the underboss and Paul was the boss.

DeeBee - Got whacked because Gotti wanted him whacked in real life Sammy was against it, but went along with it because John was the Boss.

Sammy - Killed one person himself, ordered 18 other hits.

Gotti - Never forgave Angelo for the tapes, even when Angelo was dying. Never visited him on his deathbed like in the movie.

The truth is yeah its a movie and it was a cool flick, and all but the problem is that there is noone who would ever be able to play John Gotti except John Gotti himself. His true life story/rise to power would be in my opinion impossible to put together in a 2 hour movie. I like the actor Quinn but same with Aniello Dellacroce, that guy was rare.

They did depict those f^ckin prick feds though, thats not difficult to depict.
If Gotti didn't have superstar syndrome and didn't jabber to the bugs picking up his conversation who knows how his reign would have ended. Maloney, Gleeson, Mouw and all those pricks I hope they rot in hell.

Fair point. I think what they were actually trying to do was to make a traditional classical tragedy and were just adapting the Gotti story to it. And in order to do that, you had to make Gotti into somebody the audience could sympathize with and thus would feel something when he met his downfall due to his own hubris. It was less about Gotti as a person than about the passing away of a whole way of life.

If they actually depicted Gotti as Gotti, then it wouldn't have been a tragedy (more like justice). They played up certain elements so Gotti could be viewed as a underdog/rebel. He was portrayed as being a traditional figure who was loyal to his crew, "a street guy", while Castellano was a "businessman" who was only concerned with the bottom line and practical business arrangements with no sense of family honor or street code.

One little additional point as well. Gravano is the villian of this tragedy because he betrayed his code by informing on his boss. However, there is nothing noble about Gotti keeping his code of silence because he couldn't have ratted anybody out even if he wanted to. He was the top dog. There was nobody he could've ratted on even if he wanted to.