The Don Is Dead

1973 "Power built an empire. Passion destroyed it."
6.2| 1h46m| R| en| More Info
Released: 14 November 1973 Released
Producted By: Universal Pictures
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

After his mistress is murdered, a Mafia leader goes after the killer with a bloody vengeance. Soon after the hunt begins, a gang war ensues.

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Reviews

Brightlyme i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.
Steineded How sad is this?
Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.
Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.
paul-jackson92 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.
elshikh4 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 !
bkoganbing 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.
sol1218 **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.