Benedito Dias Rodrigues When l'd watched this movie for the first time in 1986, l found it's good, after more twenty years revisiting this picture again in full restoration DVD with original audio (UGH!)...l still find a fine work from Terence Young,but have two things that could explain the movie didn't get a proper respect from the viewer, firstly was released in same time with Godfather, second the producer was Dino de Laurentiis and he is foreign and didn't has a usual critic treatment like the American has....this is absolutely a naked true, foreign producers didn't have any respect from Americans and critical, but the movie is quite good,the casting is fine, Charles Bronson, Lino Ventura,Joseph Wiseman,among others...the movie is based in a true events and has a remarkable job from Charles Bronson as Joseph Valachi who actually died in prison.Resume: First Watch: 1986 / How many: 4 / Source: TV-DVD / Rating: 7.5

Bolesroor "The Valachi Papers" tells, through flashback, the true-life story of mafia driver Joseph Valachi, who became a government informant and was the first to reveal the secrets of the cosa nostra and crime syndicate to the outside world. It is a great premise for a film, rich with possibilities of "Godfather"-like drama and excitement, but is directed so poorly and lifelessly that it fails on almost every level.Charles Bronson is Joe Valachi, and he is farthest here from his tough-guy persona than in any other of his movies. It's clear that he's actually playing a Character here, an actual person, but we never quite learn what makes Joe special or different from the high-powered crime bosses above him or the everyday joe like you and me. He spends most of the movie in old-age make-up, grumbling to his Federal contact who's trying to pump him for as much information as possible, and he comes off like a dull old man sending back his soup at a diner. The flashbacks are the heart of the film, but they reduce even the most outrageous and violent episodes- like an adulterous mafioso who gets castrated for sleeping with a boss' wife- into pre-digested afterthoughts without highs, lows or impact. The real-life assassination of a mafia don at an Italian restaurant- which is brilliantly featured in "The Godfather"- is told here with all the dramatics of an afternoon stroll: the don's dinner companions excuse themselves to the bathroom and he is showered in bullets by a pair of hit-men. Yawn.This was an Italian-made film, and seems to have been made with a homogenized eye for an international release, but that's no excuse for director Terence Young's passionless and flat execution. Even the sequence in which Joe is initiated into the brotherhood of the mafia- a scene that scandalously exposed the mob's most sacred rites- is filmed like a home-video of a Cub Scout earning his Webelos merit badge. Bronson may be stretching the limits of his acting range, but his performance would have been passable if the direction was competent."The Valachi Papers" actually beat "The Godfather" to the theaters by a matter of months, but otherwise the two films don't belong in the same sentence. What should have and could have blown the lid off the most powerful crime organization on the planet has about as much impact as two hours of C-SPAN. This is a sloppy, slapdash assemblage of stories without any insight or meaning. Terence Young doesn't know why any of this is important, so why should we care? "The Valachi Papers" is just flushable filler, and not even recommended for Bronson die-hards.GRADE: D

sol (Minor Spoilers) Facing the death penalty for the murder of a fellow inmate Joe Saupp, whom he mistakenly thought was assigned to murder him, Mafia button man or soldier Joe Valachi, Charles Bronson, is now facing death from both the federal government and his boss Mafia Kingpin and fellow convict Vito Genovese, Lino Ventura, who put a $50,000.00, later $100,000.00, contract on his head.Don Vito the boss of bosses of the five New York Mafia families has been suspicious of his friend and mob associate Joe Valachi for some time of rating him out and setting him up in a government sting on a narcotic rap and has decided to have Valachi who had nothing to do with it hit. The final straw for Joe Valachi was when Don Vito gave him the "kiss of death" after he had a friendly talk with him in his prison cell.The movie "The Valachi Papers" is no where as good as movies about the Mafia like "The Godfather" or "Goodfellows" but has the distinction of being the very first Hollywood-made movie,as far as I know, to show the inner workings of the Mafia and it's secretive and shadow-like organization La Cosa Nosra; roughly meaning "our thing" in Italian.In protective custody and being prepped for the upcoming 1963 Sen. McClellan/Kennedy hearings on Organized Crime we and federal agent Ryan, Gerald S.O'Loughlin, get the truth about the Mafia/Cosa Nostra straight from the horses mouth Joe Valachi himself. In a long flashback Valachi takes us through the turbulent 1930's 40's and 50's when the mob went from a group of petty and unimaginative crime bosses to the powerful and well oiled crime machine that it eventually became.There are those who feel that Joe Valachi's claims of his being somehow involved with almost every major Mafia figurer over those 30 some years is a bit overdone and boastful on his part in order to give himself much more credit then he really deserves. The fact that his expert testimony didn't have a single Mafiso, from solider to mob boss, even indicted tends to confirm that. Still there's no denying that he was in fact the first made Mafia member to talk and expose what ever he knew about the crime syndicate that he was involved with. All that will always have his name, Joe Valachi, as a major force in exposing the Mafia to the unaware public despite his low standing, he never rose above a button man, in that crime organization.Charles Bronson did a better then average job as the Mafia thug Joe Valachi with him acting more then using his fists and his real-life. Bronson's wife Jill Ireland was more or less window dressing playing Valachi's wife in the movie Maria the daughter of Joe's boss Gaetano Reina, Amedeo Nazzani. The person who really stole the acting honors had to be Joseph Wiseman playing the first Mafia Boss of Bosses hyped-up Sal Maranzno. Wiseman was so tuned, or wired, into his role that he looked and acted like he was doing a stand-up comedy routine aided by downing a bottle of uppers. There was also the rest of the legendary "murderers row" of the mob in the movie that included Albert Anastasia Lucky Luciano & Joe "The Boss" Masseria played by Fausto Tozzi Angelo Infanti and Alessandro Sperll.Valachi a good soldier almost to the end broke from tradition and the Mafia code of "Morte" or silence. Thats when he saw that after all the hard work he did in dedicating his heart and soul to the Mafia he was given the short end of the stick by boss Vito Genovese for something he didn't do. It's then that Valachi spelled the end of the powerful mob organization that took the likes of Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, incidentally a non-Italian, over thirty years to build. If Joe Valachi was only treated with more respect and understanding by the paranoid and homicidal Vito Genovese things may well have been different for all those represented in the movie.P.S Joe Valachi did in the end get his wish from the Federal Government by outliving his boss and the person who put a price on his head, for $100,000.00, Vito Genovese by almost two years. Joe Valachi died in prison in 1971 at age 67 of natural causes.

kikiloveslegwarmers Just saw this film again on DVD. Really wasn't overly impressed. Of course it's old hat now and really out-dated. It rode in on the coat-tails of the Godfather and though Charles Bronson is good and Lino Ventura isn't too bad either, it's really the same old rehash of a typical mob story. The bright light of the film is sexy redhead Maria Baxa as Donna, Lino Ventura's mistress in the film. She is smoking hot and sexy as the over-sexed moll who beds both a beautiful woman and one of her boy-friend's bodyguards. It's really unbelievable that this beauty never achieved international fame.So, unless you're really a fan of Charles Bronson, Lino Ventura or the beautiful Maria Baxa, The Valachi Papers is only an above average rehashing of your typical mob movie.