"Goodfellas" and "Donnie Brasco" were accurate portrayals of the grungy, low-rent aspects of US Mafia life--attest the scene in "Brasco" when your namesake's crew are reduced to busting open parking meters. I see "Mean Streets" as less a Mafia movie than a film (a masterpiece) about friendship and responsibility. Likewise, the Godfather Trilogy is less a series about the Mafia, than a family saga with the Mafia as the defining milieu--just as "Gone With the Wind" was not a US Civil War movie--it was about a family with the war as a defining milieu. That said, GFII was very prescient in showing the Mafia's influence in Nevada and Cuba. The depiction of Havana on the eve of Castro's takeover was so authentic that professors of Latin American history advise their students to view it.

"Casino" gives an excellent, highly detailed look at Mafia penetration of Las Vegas. A low-budget (but very good) movie, "Honor Thy Father," is very engrossing in its depiction of the "Banana War" of the Bonanno Family.