Takeoff on the Godfather with the son of a mafia king taking over for his dying father.
Young Vincenzo Cortino, son of a Sicilian postman, delivers a package for his father and accidentally sees something he should not see. In a donkey's, well, he is smuggled out of town, where he tries to reach a ship headed for America. There, Vincenzo works his way up to the top of the Mafia. One day, his youngest son makes a mistake and has to leave town. A little later, he ends up as a casino boss in Las Vegas. But the heads of the other families want old Don Cortino out of the way. So, they shoot him 47 times and send a *very* attractive woman to distract his son from his casino work. Will he fall for her or will he return to Diane, who, by the way, had run for President successfully in the meantime?—Julian Reischl <[email protected]>
Like the 1974 film The Godfather Part II, the narrative of Mafia! consists of a series of flashbacks interwoven with the main plot. Tony (Jay Mohr) is the son of a prominent Mafia don, Vincenzo Armani Windbreaker Cortino (Lloyd Bridges). As the film opens, Tony introduces the main thread when he exits a Vegas casino and walks to his car, accompanied by a voiceover explaining his philosophy of life. When he starts the car, it explodes. Tony ran the most profitable casino in Las Vegas, with all games rigged to simply take their customers money.
The story then regresses more than half a century (to 1901) to describe the boyhood of Tony's father, Vincenzo, who was born in Italy, the clumsy (& accident prone) son of a Sicilian postman living in a small town called Salmonella. One day, while making a delivery for his father, Vincenzo trips and the parcel bursts open, revealing a strange white powder. The parcel's recipient, concluding that the delivery boy has seen too much, tracks Vincenzo to a street fair, where he kills his father. During the fracas, Vincenzo is separated from his mother Sofia, and only gets her ring as her identity proof.
The boy escapes to America (hiding inside a donkey's ass), where he grows to young manhood, marries, and struggles with poverty before finally finding his destiny as a mafia boss. Vincenzo is smart and defeats his opponents with his wits. He starts in New York, where a local mafia don seeks protection money from Vincenzo, who is already dirt poor and struggling to make ends meet. Eventually Vincenzo kills the local mafia don trying to protect Tony and rises to the position of Don himself.
Dominick Clamato (Joe Viterelli) is Vincenzo's trusted enforcer.The film then visits the recent past; Tony has just returned from the Korean War and is bringing his idealistic Protestant girlfriend, Diane (Christina Applegate), to meet his family and friends at his big brother Joey's (Billy Burke) wedding reception (a parody of Connie Corleone's wedding in the beginning of the 1972 film The Godfather). Don Gorgoni meets Vincenzo and offers to make him partners in his drugs business. Joey scoffs at Gorgoni's offer. Also invited to the wedding is Don Marzoni, who runs a casino in Las Vegas. Marzoni considers the invitation an honor to his family.During the festivities, however, Vincenzo is shot 47 times in an attempted hit and nearly dies. Tony announces his intention to kill Gorgoni (Vincent Pastore), a drug lord with whom Vincenzo had refused to do business before the attack. Vincenzo also suspects the parcel recipient from Salmonella, who could be his potential assassin.
Diane leaves him, saying he's abandoned the peaceful ideals of his youth, and adding that she'll never be anything to his Sicilian family but "that Protestant chick who never killed anyone." Tony avenges the attack by killing Gorgoni inside a restaurant, then goes into hiding in Las Vegas, where Cesar Marzoni (Tony Lo Bianco) offers him the opportunity to manage his casino, The Peppermill. Tony accepts and his casino is a great success. Joey comes to Vegas to run security for Tony. Tony meets a Femme Fatale, Pepper Gianini (Pamela Gidley), hired by Marzoni as part of a deep-laid plan to distract him from his duties and to drive a wedge between him and Joey.As Tony gets distracted the cheaters take hold of the casino and start winning big. Joey couldn't handle the situation as he was swimming in drugs.
Vincenzo recovers from his 47 gunshot wounds and visits Las Vegas, where he officially names Tony his successor. Joey, furious at being passed over, is told "You get Wisconsin." Joey responds by sleeping with Pepper, which Tony discovers. The Don then returns home, where he falls victim to his 5-year-old grandson, Chucky, who assassinates him by spraying him with malathion (parody of Vito Corleone's heart attack in The Godfather). The film returns to the present after Tony catches Joey and Pepper cavorting in a hotel room together and walks out in disgust - only to have his car explode.
Tony is horribly but temporarily disfigured, and attends his father's funeral in a wheelchair, where he spots the killers when he sees little Chucky taking a payoff. The killer was no one other than Don Marzoni himself. he was the parcel recipient in Salmonella, who had tried to kill Vincenzo even back then.However, he decides to postpone vengeance until he can win back Diane's love and put his life in order. Diane has by this time become President of the United States and is on the brink of declaring total world disarmament when Tony goes looking for her. He persuades her to put world peace on the back burner until after their wedding. Just before the wedding Tony confronts Joey and says that he knows that he was working with Marzoni to get Tony out of the way. He sends Joey away with a one-way ticket, never to return to New York.
During the ceremony, with the help of Vincenzo's mother Sophia (Olympia Dukakis), several henchmen, and gangster Nick "The Eskimo" Molinaro, he settles the family's accounts in an orgy of slaughter (filmed similarly to the end of The Godfather), even arranging the harpooning of Barney the Dinosaur as a bonus.
Later, Tony has a change of heart and turns a witness for the state. He has had plastic surgery and now lives as AG Janet Reno.
