Tony Soprano. Why are gangster movies so popular?

 

Mafia Boss - Tony Soprano

What a character Tony Soprano was. You wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of him.

I remember watching the scene when Tony beat to death and strangled the 'made-man', Ralph Cifaretto, because he suspected him of killing his favourite race horse Pie-O-My. What a mess he made of him. He even killed his own nephew by suffocation. Even Tony's psychiatrist, Jennifer Melfi, needed therapy after a few sessions with the Mafia boss.

I like Lorraine Bracco, but I don't think she portrayed a convincing psychiatrist. She showed far too much feeling and emotion during the therapy sessions. The late James Gandolfini, played a great part as a New Jersey Mafia boss.

I don't think Tony particularly enjoyed violence for the sake of it, but he knows that it's absolutely necessary to keep people in their place if you want to get what you want. Violence for him, is purely instrumental, and part of the business that he's in. His father, Johnny Soprano, was a capo in the DiMeo crime family. He knows that people have to be scared of you but also respect you. Tony is not a tyrant at home and doesn't really dominate his wife or kids. They don't know everything but they've figured out that they don't live their kind of lifestyle because their father runs a garbage business. They know he's a gangster and are slightly embarrassed by it.

I wonder if Tony's wife, really understood the type of man she was married to. If she did, she was taking chance when she cheated on him. It's not likely that she'd get "whacked", but I can't say the same thing for her boyfriend.

While I don't care for gangsters, murderers, and extortionists, or think that organised crime and its villains should be romanticised, there's something that appeals to many of us about the outlaw, and those that live on the fringes of society and don't abide by the rules of society or its laws. That's why a TV series like the Sopranos or a film like Goodfellas or the Godfather, are so popular. Perhaps there's a bit of villain or beast lurking in all of us.