Tommaso Buscetta, a middling member of the Cosa Nostra, or Sicilian mafia, is best known for his betrayal of the mob as an informant for the Italian government. His testimony helped to prosecute nearly 500 members of the Sicilian mafia in the 1980s, and, after fleeing to the United States, Buscetta remained a member of the Witness Protection Program until his death from cancer in 2000. Because Buscetta’s story has all the elements of a great mafia movie–feuding Sicilian families, senseless violence, betrayal, moral conflict, legal drama–it is logical to assume that his biopic would be a well-executed, emotionally fraught film. However, The Traitor, Italy’s submission for the 2020 Oscars, does not do right by its gripping historical basis, and it turns the unique, complicated story of Tommaso Buscetta into an overly lengthy, tiresome, conventional mafia film.
