TOUGH LOVE

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

Just in case we haven't sussed out the metaphor from dozens of other movies and books devoted to romanticizing Cosa Nostra, Mario Puzo's The Last Don, a six-hour mini-series (beginning May 11, 9:00 p.m. E.T., CBS) based on the author's best-selling 1996 novel, is here to remind us that the Mob functions no more or less rapaciously than any corporation or government, and at least its employees know a good prosciutto when they see one. Hollywood studios are run by vicious souls, the movie tells us; politicians are a meretricious and evil-thinking breed.

That understood, the Clericuzios, the Corleone-like family around which this saga revolves, still seem to be an awfully heartless bunch. The story is set in motion when Rose Marie (played in her youth by Emily Hampshire and later as an embittered nutbag by Kirstie Alley) falls for a young man in the rival Santadio family. Rose Marie's father, Don Domenico (Danny Aiello), disapproves of the union. So what does he do? He has his sons kill the young man on the couple's wedding night and then reflects to himself that Rose Marie shouldn't have been spared. Perhaps this is too sunny-eyed a view of the world, but this critic firmly believes that if Michael Eisner wanted to separate a daughter from an unsuitable mate, he'd simply get the guy a job at Euro Disney.

When it isn't taking its subject too seriously, The Last Don is more amusing than the rest of this month's mini-series. Where else can we find Daryl Hannah playing an actress named Athena Aquitane who stars in a $50 million feminist action flick directed by k.d. lang?

--G.B.