When Joe Valachi (Charles Bronson) has a price put on his head by Don Vito Genovese (Lino Ventura), he must take desperate steps to protect himself while in prison. An aging hitman befriends a young man who wants to be a professional killer. 7 of 10 people found this review helpful. A runaway teenager and a mixed-race horse breeder strike an unlikely friendship in the context of common hardships. Gangster Joe Valachi is a marked man in the same joint where mob boss Don Vito Genovese is imprisoned and he's forced to co-operate with the DA in exchange for protection. The Valachi Papers was shot at a time when common wisdom had it that gangster pictures were box-office poison, so the very American tale of Charles Bronson's Cosa Nostra soldier spilling the beans on … Was this review helpful to you? During the era of the Stalin purges, it was not enough that the offending party member be found guilty. Valachi's criminal career began with a small gang known as "The Minutemen," so-called for carrying out smash and grab burglaries and escaping within a minute and subsequently as a chauffeur.I n the early 1930s, through mob contact Dominick "The Gap" Petrilli (Walter Chiari) , Valachi was introduced to the Cosa Nostra or Mafia, and soon became a soldier in the Reina Family (now known as the Lucchese Family) during the height of the Castellammarese War. Use the HTML below.