Review #699: 'Goodfellas' (1990)

During one of the many thrilling montage sequences littered throughout one of Martin Scorsese's most revered films, gangster Henry Hill arrives home at Christmas time with a giant white and tacky Christmas tree and announces "I got the most expensive tree they had!". This sums up the colourful characters that inhabit Goodfellas, cheap, trashy thugs who hold more value to material possessions with hefty price-tags than human life. It has been criticised for glamorising these criminal types, all sharp, shiny suits, slick hair and big cars, and it's easy to get lost amongst the glitz and lifestyle. But although Scorsese alludes to the appeal of this live-fast way of life, he doesn't have much sympathy for its characters, and rightly so. Henry Hill may be the protagonist, our window into this world of high-rolling mafioso, but when he's stripped of his 'friends' and cash, he's not much more than a coke-addled rat.

Ever since he was a little kid, Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) always wanted to be a gangster. In his blue-collar, Irish Brooklyn neighbourhood, he begins by parking cadillacs for local gangsters, and eventually starts to work for Jimmy 'The Gent' Conway (Robert De Niro). As the years go by, Henry, Jimmy and Italian-American loose-canon Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) form a small crew hijacking trucks and carrying out heists. Henry marries a wild and beautiful Jewish girl named Karen (Lorraine Bracco), and things seem peachy under the watch of boss Paulie (Paul Sorvino). But when Henry starts selling cocaine under the disapproving Paulie's nose, his world begins to crumble and he can no longer trust his friend, and the ugly side of the gangster business rears its head.

Looking back at his early works such as Mean Streets (1973) and his documentary short Italianamerican (1974), there was always a sense of authenticity in Scorsese's Italian-American-focused work. All the talk now so clearly associated with Italian-Americans was practically invented by the director, and became so influential it now seems cliché and stereotyping. But Scorsese came from these types of neighbourhoods, and this rubs off on Goodfellas. This world seems so unreal - a world where a character can be beating money out of someone one minute, and then being sent champagne by a famous crooner the next - yet it comes alive in Scorsese's hands. The much-celebrated Steadicam sequence has been much imitated, but it still retains its crown. You get washed away amongst it all just like Karen.

The film simply catapults you through it's story, showing snippets of gangster life through some breathtaking montages with voiceover narration. One minute Henry is enjoying new found love, sipping champagne while the glorious soundtrack plays in the background, the next he's on a paranoid and ill-fated drug deal. At the end I felt exhausted, like I'd just lived an entire life within 2 hours, and I've seen this film many times. But still, 24 years after it was made, it still feels fresh, energetic and innovative. Perhaps The Sopranos took its mantle when it took the gangster genre and made it a metaphor for American consumption, but it owes Goodfellas an overwhelming dose of gratitude. It also make it all the more tragic that Joe Pesci has retired from film, as his Oscar-winning performance and the final shot of him shooting at the camera a la The Great Train Robbery (1903) will linger long after the credits have rolled.


Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, Paul Sorvino
Country: USA

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie