I just watched this 1999 docudrama last night.
Excellent Cadavers is a 1995 non-fiction book by American author Alexander Stille about the Sicilian Mafia, concentrating on magistrate Giovanni Falcone‘s fight against the Mafia and his 1992 assassination.
The name of the book comes from the phrase "excellent cadavers" (cadaveri eccellenti), used by the Italian police when referring to high-profile victims of the Mafia such as politicians, judges and police chiefs (as opposed to less public victims claimed by day-to-day Mafia business). In a more general sense, cadaveri eccellenti means an unsolved murder in a game of the same name.
Excellent Cadavers was made into a movie in 1999, starring Chazz Palminteri as Giovanni Falcone and F. Murray Abraham as informant Tommaso Buscetta.
An earlier fictional movie bearing the title Cadaveri Eccellenti was made in Italy in 1975, directed by Francesco Rosi and starring Lino Ventura.
