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Great Film overall

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Vendetta is a tough film to watch without feeling sadness and outrage, but such is the stuff that HBO churns out, honest pieces of history that sting you with their refusal to honey coat or gloss over the nasty details (I'm looking at you, History Channel). This one takes place in 1890 New York City, a time of mass Irish and Italian immigration which spurred a ton of unrest among those already settled and raised in that area. Everyone is fighting tooth and nail for a piece of the pie and a chance to feed their families, and the ones with a bunch of pie just greedily want more. The influx of Italians is a cause for insidious worry for James Houston (Christopher Walken), an obscenely wealthy and deeply corrupt piece of schit. He's joined by equally nasty William Parkinson (Luke Askew), and Mayor Joe Shakespeare (Kenneth Welsh), as the trio cook up an evil scheme to implicate a few young Italian men in the mysterious death of a sympathetic and kindly Irish police chief (Clancy Brown). This sets in motion a tragic outbreak of riots and and angry acts of violence against the Italians. Even their union representitive Joseph Macheca (Joaquim De Almeida) cannot bring peace or stop what Walken and team have started. You may think why make a film of this, as it heads straight for the bleakest of resolutions, but I think it's important to shine a light on even the darkest patches of history, in order to understand the levels of deception and human cruelty so that we may see it coming before it's too late next time around. This was a terrible, terrible event and the film hits you square in the face with it's blunt truth and unwavering honesty. Kudos to HBO fpr taking it on. Watch for the late Edward Herrmann and Bruce Davison as rival lawyers in the chaos.

Theodore Roosevelt was contemptuous of races and nations he considered inferior. When a mob in New Orleans lynched a number of Italian immigrants, Roosevelt thought the United States should offer the Italian government some remuneration, but privately he wrote his sister that he thought the lynching was "rather a good thing" and told her he had said as much at a dinner with "various dago diplomats . . . all wrought up by the lynching."This was the attitude of America in 1891. The New York Times on March 14, 1891, published an article describing the events in this film with the following headline: CHIEF HENNESSY AVENGED; ELEVEN OF HIS Italian ASSASSINS LYNCHED BY A MOB. The attitude of the whites in New Orleans can best be summed up by the comments from one businessman, "I would rather have a thousand Chinamen, than one Italian.This information is critical to understanding the movie, the truth of which is well documented. It was not just African Americans that suffered lynching after the Civil War, many Italians suffered the same fate across the country, but mostly in the South.Timothy Prager's script hewed very closely to Richard Gambino's book. The performances were outstanding, particularly Christopher Walken, Joaquim de Almeida, and Clancy Brown, in the short time he was on screen. Alessandro Colla and Megan McChesney provided a romantic distraction amid the chaos. This was their only screen roles, and they did very well.I am grateful to Alan DiFiore, Mark Israe,Sue Jett,Gary Lucchesi,Tony Mark, Nicholas Pileggi, and Gary A. Randall for making this important film.

This was a fairly interesting historical drama, but the portrayals were so black and white that the story seemed improbable to me. I suspect the true story is a bit more "gray" than the movie suggests. Our politically correct society allows these one sided views only when the "white anglo saxon protestant" male is the villain.

people should be grateful for true history.so that nobody forgets.it's a great movie and somewhat a documentation.i would like to thank hbo for making movies that are true. i hope that hbo keeps these movies coming,that's how most people discover history and learn the truth.