As a descendant of Charles Matranga, and a former New Orleanian who has done extensive research into this historical era, I can absolutely assure that this movie, like many "Hollywood" movies, is so factually incorrect it is laughable, and somewhat offensive. My great grandfather, known also as "Millionaire Charlie" Matranga, one of the original founders of the New Orleans Sicilian Mafia (the first "family" in the USA, before New York) was most definitely not an "innocent fruit vendor turned scapegoat" as portrayed in this debacle. In fact, he was the original true Godfather very much like the fictional Don Vito Corleone, before the time of the Godfather films. Clearly, the filmmakers chose to ignore the several in-depth investigations easily accessible in libraries, although not widely known by the American public. Truth is, The New Orleans Mafia has been operating for well over a hundred years in relative obscurity, while the New York and Chicago Mafiosi have received a lot of attention. I think the fact of this lack of attention to the New Orleans mafia was probably not lost on the filmmakers, who may have purposely used it to their advantage thinking that most people wouldn't know the historical reality otherwise. While there were indeed many innocent Italians who suffered extreme prejudice and violence, the major players in the assassination of police chief Hennessey, and some of which were victims of the consequent lynching, were most definitely Sicilian-born and descended Mafiosi or associates. Hennessey himself was a corrupt cop, from a family of corrupt cops, who willingly chose the "wrong side" to align himself with in the battle over the New Orleans docks and territory between the Matranga and Provenzano families. I have never seen a film which has so blatantly distorted historical events as "Vendetta". Instead of using the opportunity to make a historically accurate film to show the rise and motivations of the first American family of the Sicilian mafia(as an accurate "prequel" of sorts to "The Godfather"), the true plight of Italian immigrants in a foreign and often inhospitable land, and the operations of corrupt political, judicial, and law enforcement systems (akin to Scorsese's Gangs of New York), instead the filmmakers decided to make a revisionist, "politically correct", fictional debacle and have the shameful audacity to say it is "based on true events". In short, the film is based on bullshit. The truth may not be what people want it to be, and I certainly don't want to believe my ancestor was a murderer and criminal, but it is what it is. He had his reasons. People did what they thought they had to do, for the survival and success of their families and themselves. Some innocent people died as collateral damage, and for this reason, the American Mafia established a "rule" that is generally followed to this day - don't kill cops, especially not the chief cop, or major crap will happen, sometimes to innocent people, sometimes to the guilty. This movie doesn't really show or suggest that, although in reality, that was probably the most important take-home message of the actual events. In short, don't watch this film if you're looking for a movie that is even remotely historically correct. It's a damn shame, because Christopher Walken is one of the finest actors of our time. Ask yourself this - if this film's portrayal really was the way it was - why was it made into a TV movie, and not a cinematic release ? Why ?...because it's malarkey, that can easily be verified as such... by reading a book.
