Sorry I missed this interesting topic the first time around. Taras, I concur with the stance of your friends and your uncle. I regard the Sopranos with something approaching contempt: I agree that it glorifies the criminal lifestyle. The lead actor of that show is almost like a sex symbol, and for what? Playing a ruthless mafia bastard, right? I also have no patience for the Godfather films. Yes, I acknowledge their significance in the history of American cinema, but personally I don't care for what those films stand for. They've ended up romanticizing the mafia lifestyle so much that when the "real" godfather, John Gotti, was brought to trial, he was a celebrity and even a kind of hero to some. Am I wrong in this?
I have zero tolerance for gangsters. Plain and simple. Is it any wonder that I prefer a show like Law & Order? It may well be my favorite television drama of all time. I prefer a show in which the stars aren't the gangsters and the murderers, but the detectives and prosecutors who go after them. It's also no wonder that I prefer a movie like The Untouchables, in which an incorruptible Eliot Ness doggedly pursues and takes down Al Capone for the wretched thug he is.
Av, you make a salient point. Yes, I suppose the bad guys "always" get it in the end in mainstream movies (and not just American, to be sure). But as I see it, this "message" at the end is often rendered impotent by what has gone before - the emphasis on the glamorous life of the criminal before his comeuppance. That's the "Don Juan" message, seductively saying that if you're doomed to go to Hell, you might as well sin to the fullest - which means if you're a mobster, you might as well take down the city with you to Hell. While dressed in the finest tailoring, drinking the finest wine and having all the pretty girls at your command. Sex and violence. Seducing the viewer. So what if he gets it in the end? The audience would rather be the wealthy mobster with the unbridled libido than the noble but underpaid cop. In the end, what or who does the audience really care about?
At least in a movie like The Untouchables, the lines are drawn clear: our sympathy is with Ness, not Capone. Although, Av, knowing your intense dislike of authority, you'd probably not be impressed with Ness.  I don't go around worshipping authority myself, but neither do I worship criminal or aggressively antisocial behaviour.
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And I'd be a lot easier with authority if they limited themselves to curbing that.