TV: Copycat killers

IT'S A CASE of life imitating art tonight when Network 2 screens an intimate documentary on the lives of New York mobsters from the excellent Frame 2 series.

From the tommy-gun toting wise guys in the mob movies of the 30s to the Uzi-wielding mobsters of The Sopranos, Hollywood has always loved a gangster and the mafia it seems, loves Hollywood back.

In Mafia NY the lives of New York's Cosa Nostra, better known as the mafia, are examined and found to be not unlike the Hollywood gangsters we have all come to know and fear from Scarface to Michael Corleone.

The film exposes how modern day gangsters have become so taken by the glamourous portrayal of their lives on screen that they have begun to ape their Hollywood counterparts in the way they speak, dress and conduct their daily lives.

The landscape of the film is eerily familiar, from the godfathers' mansions in Staten Island, to ornate midtown Italian restaurants with back rooms perfect for family business, New York is shown to be the 'family' town depicted in films like The Godfather and Goodfellas.

The film takes us on a tour of New York mobland and introduces us to a variety of its most colourful characters. Included are New York's top mob outfitter who can tailor suits according to the size of the gun one needs to conceal.

Of course where there are gangsters there is pasta and the documentary tours the more popular Mafia restaurants of the moment, and meets a mob chef currently in the witness protection program.

The film-makers gain unprecedented access to the extraordinary lives of New York's mobsters, visiting their homes including one Brooklyn mansion where the owner killed his architect, such was his displeasure on seeing the completed building.

There is a host of historical mob landmarks visited in the film too, like the Coney Island location where Scarface Al Capone got his scar. The guides are gangsters themselves, including Henry Hill who comes out of hiding to show the filmmakers his New York. Hill is the one-time gangster turned informer portrayed by Ray Liota in the movie Goodfellas.

Mafia NY meets a new generation of wise guys, like Danny Provenzano of the New Jersey Provenzano-Lanza crime family.

Provenzano's uncle was implicated in the Mafia hit on Teamster Union leader, Jimmy Hoffa, a crime that also caught Hollywood's attention in the Jack Nicholson movie, Hoffa.

The line between real Mafioso and Hollywood gangsters gets blurred when Danny invites the cameras to a party where the guests are celebrity mob actors like Big Pussy of the Sopranos and Frank Vincente of Goodfellas as well as several real gangsters.

Mafia NY is a fascinating look at how Hollywood has borrowed from the lives of America's mobsters and how the Mafia in turn, has borrowed the style and manners of Hollywood gangsters and made it their own.

Mafia NY, Network 2, tonight, 8.00pm

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