Real-life mob narratives are always fascinating to us because they show a version of the mob that is just as ruled by protocol and respect as the fictional depictions are, but show that, whenever possible they try to operate in the shadows. So when one splashy mob hit after another make the local news, it’s a big deal. In Philadelphia in the early 1990s, it signaled a massive war among mob factions, as a new docuseries examines.
Opening Shot: We see the back and side of a man’s head; he takes a puff on a cigarette and says, “We just drove every day looking to kill people. That’s all I did.”
The Gist: Mob War: Philadelphia Vs. The Mafia is a three-part docuseries, directed by Raissa Botterman, that examines the mob violence that dominated headlines in the City of Brotherly Love in the early 1990s. It was a back and forth war between two mafia factions: The loyalists to John Stanfa, and the “young guns” that were loyal to Joey Merlino.
Through interviews with former mob soldiers and law enforcement, along with surveillance video and audio, we hear about the power vacuum that was created with the arrest of Nicky Scarfo in 1986. While Scarfo was considered a homicidal maniac, the idea was that the Sicilian-born Stanfa, hand-picked by New York’s Five Families to lead the Philly mob, would bring some stability. The idea, as some of the interviewees mention, was to “make money, not headlines.” With Atlantic City as part of their territory, there was plenty of opportunity, and splashy mob hits that make the local news don’t help.
But “young guns” like Joey Merlino thought of Stanfa as a “zip,” an outsider who couldn’t tell them what to do. Merlino and his loyalists wore designer clothes, drove flashy cars, and aimed to take over the whole operation.
Federal agents and technicians explain how they were able to get intelligence from informants as well as bug the office of a noted mob attorney, where Stanfa started to slip and talk more directly about killing Merlino and his crew after a member of Stanfa’s crew was killed in a planned hit by Merlino’s faction.
Photo: Courtesy of Netflix
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Mob War: Philadelphia Vs. The Mafia feels like a spiritual sequel to the docuseries Fear City: New York Vs. The Mafia.
Our Take: Mob War: Philadelphia Vs. The Mafia presents its story in a straightforward manner, laying out who the players were in this organized crime civil war. Like most mob stories, this one not only involves a power struggle, but the protocols involving respect and loyalty that always underpin anything involving La Cosa Nostra.
Given the flurry of names, and the fact that the Ciancaglini brothers split their loyalties, with one becoming Stanfa’s capo and the other becoming Merlino’s second-in-command, it takes some concentration to figure out who’s loyalties lie with whom. But there is a helpful org chart that gets filled in as the warring factions are discussed, and there’s all sorts of early ’90s footage of Stanfa and Merlino to help us keep track.
The parts of the first episode that fascinated us the most were the segments about how the FBI set up surveillance in risky places like the attorney’s office and the luncheonette owned by Stanfa. The fact that a hit against Stanfa, which killed his capo Joey Ciancaglini, took place at the luncheonette a couple of hours after the feds bugged it really held our interest, because the riskiness of going in and installing microphones in a known mob hangout seems like an underrated aspect of federal law enforcement that we should hear more about.
Photo: Courtesy of Netflix
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: John Veasey, the hitman we saw in the first scene, sits down for his interview. “I had no morals. It was just kill… just kill.”
Sleeper Star: Veasey is definitely in this category, but so is the tough-as-nails Charlotte Lang, the supervising FBI agent for their organized crime team in the Philly office.
Most Pilot-y Line: Reenactments are kept to a minimum, but there’s one where Lang answers the phone next to her bed that seemed a bit cheesy to us.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Mob War: Philadelphia Vs. The Mafia presents its story without a lot of narrative trickery, and just lets the many-layered drama of mob business do the talking.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.