John Travolta too wimpy to play Mob boss - claim

Mafia rat Lewis Kasman, who is in the witness protection programme after turning Fed informer, said Gotti would be horrified by the casting choice.

'I think if he was asked, he would not be pleased at Travolta playing him,' Kasman told a US newspaper.

'For John Gotti Sr., you need a man's man to play that role.

'John Gotti Sr. never danced a dance in his life,' he said, hitting out at Travolta's starring role in Saturday Night Fever.

Kasman said a better choice to play the so-called 'Dapper Don' on the big screen would have been Robert De Niro or Al Pacino.

Kasman - who avoided an 11-year prison term by helping authorities - said that X-Men star Ben Foster had been 'miscast' as John 'Junior' Gotti.

'He's a thug, so you need someone who's a thug - a guy who grew up in that life,' Kasman told the New York Post.

Gotti, who died in 2002 at the age of 61, rose to become the head of the Gambino crime family in New York City.

Kasman is planning to publish his memoir, The Last Son, at the same time as the release of the movie, Gotti: In the Shadow of My Father.