"The Don is Dead" is one of the worst films of the 1970s. There is no creative output of any kind and the whole is just one extended television film (no offense meant to T.V films). Any potential was gone after the opening 15 minutes. The meeting with the Mafia Godfathers was mildly diverting but that is about all. Anthony Quinn is actually well cast as one of the Mafia Dons, why couldn't a better screenplay have been written? The use of "Universal's" backlot is painfully obvious and robs the film of any kind of scale it might otherwise have had. There is some action but so what? Anyone can put together a scene involving a gunfight. Any comparison between "The Don is Dead" and "The Godfather" is purely coincidental and I'm not the biggest fan of the latter movie.

In his career, movie director Richard Fleischer made some very good movies, "Compulsion" and "The Narrow Margin" being just two of them. However, when he reached the 1970s, though he made a few more good movies ("The Spikes Gang", "Soylent Green") his talent started to decline, and before the decade was over he started to make an unbreakable string of stinkers up to the point he retired in the late 1980s. "The Don Is Dead" was the first sign that in the early 1970s that he was going past his prime. To be fair, it seems that he wasn't given a lavish budget for this movie. The movie is so obviously shot on phony- looking back lots and sets, giving the movie a made-for-TV feeling. (This shabby look may be why music composer Jerry Goldsmith wrote a very television-style musical score for the movie.) And the script is nothing to shout about, having a bunch of mobster-themed plot turns that we've seen many times before. Some of the acting isn't bad - the movie is filled with talented actors, not just Anthony Quinn. But you don't just go to a movie to see good acting, you want an engaging story and characters, which for the most part this movie simply does not have.

I hate the 1970s, and anybody sane must ! This is a movie with a stuff that I'm trying to imagine who could be attracted by?! The direction is TV-ish, with the bad meanings of the term; in other words there is no creativeness or craftsmanship. It's tragic that this is directed by Richard Fleischer; the same man who made once upon a time The Vikings (1958), The Boston Strangler (1968), and Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). Now here's a new characteristic for the 1970s, it makes even the good directors do BAD! Forget about the music, originally I thought there was none, asking myself is it the 1970s realism ?!! But after a while I discovered that (Jerry Goldsmith) himself composed the music to it (I feel no need to repeat the characteristic I just said earlier !). The sets are poor. The drama is a joke; being just a dumb war over a chick (Troy? Even if, this is the weakest of them all !). It goes on boringly because it's nothing but a meaningless thriller, with pure killings and no thrill. The script itself is arithmetical; kill so-and-so, then a response by killing else so-and-so yet from the other side, then kill another so-and-so, to have another so-and-so killed, and so on with the killer killed so-and-sos ! The characters are trivially written; compared to them Donald Duck got interesting psychological dimensions! Everyone was moving like dummies, and talking like robots. (Robert Forster) looks handsome with cool jackets; that's all the good things that I can tell about him here! After notable and so energetic career that includes 3 and 4 films a year, except for his role in (The Marseille Contract), (Anthony Quinn) would be out of job for the next 3 years. Hence (TDID), the only movie he did in 1973, says a lot about how he was having such a big problem working in real movies during the 1970s. No doubt it's one of his worst, if not The Worst ! The effect of (The Godfather) is more than perceptible (2 mob generations, a conflict over power, assassinations' sequences…). However, it's part of the exploitation's wave. Well, the lousy exploitation's wave to be precise. And with having catchy names (like Quinn, Goldsmith and Fleischer) then it is disappointing, deepening the deplorable irony between Hollywood's golden age and its tin one! Save the chilly explosion at the garage, nothing is distinguished, or rather watchable. From a long experience of miserable devoted viewer; in the 1970s all what it took to make a gangster movie was enough guns, fires, blood, added to zero direction, terrible actors, and female nudity. The thing is; after 40 years they still do the same, but as straight-to-video; namely, they became more truthful and explicit. According to the TV quality, the Italian characters, the set in which Forster's character Frank was hiding; this is not a movie, this is Kojack : the lost episode (and it's a low-grade one too). Otherwise, it's long lame massacre of a movie ! I give it just 2 stars; one for (Quinn)'s suits, and the other is for the girl's orange bikini. Finally, my title is just a way to express some anger, since the real idiot wasn't the don; it's ME for wasting nearly 2 hours of my life watching him. Simply, the don is dead, so this movie too !

Like quite a few other of the 70's crime dramas that were not classics, but still of more grit and consequence than many of those churned out in the last two decades, this interestingly plotted mob film is a frustrating mix of a really good scene or two followed by a painfully predictable and badly presented one. Anthony Quinn is top billed but largely wasted as the boss whose romantic liaison triggers a war of wills and weapons with some headstrong younger members (led by Robert Forster, Frederic Forrest and Al Lettieri.) Some good action scenes follow, but, like the rest of the film, some of them are quite impressive while others fall flat. A mixed bag, not often seen but worth watching, with limited expectations.