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

Review #13: 'The Basketball Diaries' (1995)

Based on the autobiographical novel written by Jim Carroll, The Basketball Diaries follows one young man's descent into addiction, crime and homelessness. Jim (here played with mature dedication by Leonardo Di Caprio) is a promising high school basketball player, who along with his three friends, enjoy shooting hoops and getting into general mischief. What starts out as a past-time, soon deteriorates into something more deprived and desperate, as Jim sees his world crash around him as his drug habit becomes an unstoppable affliction.

When Jim's situation gets so desperate that he leaves home to hustle and rob on the streets, he begins to push away the people in his life that were once close to him. His mother, played by Lorraine Bracco, throws him out after the extremities of his situation become apparent to her and refuses him back. Reggie (Ernie Hudson) was an inspirational figure and mentor to Jim and regularly met up to play basketball in the court. And Neutron (Patrick McGaw) distances himself from Jim and his friends' habits and focuses on his basketball career, much to Jim's dismay. These people will all have a profound effect on Jim's eventual redemption. The film also switches the book's real-life setting from 1960's New York to the 90's.

What The Basketball Diaries attempts to do is to create a realistic and gritty (a phrase that seems to be thrown around a lot these days) depiction of drug abuse, and create a hellish portrait of a confused young man who his throwing away his many talents in favour of a life that is doing nothing but ruining his life and isolating the people around him. In reality, this is a terribly-directed film that seems to sledgehammer the phrase 'drugs are bad' into the viewers skull, rather than having the nerve, or in deed the respect, to let the audience make their own mind up. Or maybe the director doesn't have the skill to create a film capable of conjuring up those feelings in the viewer. It sounds ridiculous, but if you have seen the South Park episode where Mr Mackey is giving his anti-drug lecture by simply listing the drugs that are 'bad', then you can see a clear parallel to this film. Jim basically goes from one drug to the other and one crime to the next. It's not interesting, convincing, and to be honest I found it all just very annoying.

Jim is a character of no redeeming qualities. He's selfish, careless, and is basically a whiny little shit. Fair enough, this is a chance to develop an interesting, fully-rounded character, but director Scott Kalvert and scriptwriter Bryan Goluboff cannot combine their 'skills' to pull it off. Even though Jim narrates the film and reveals everything about his feelings and opinions, and Di Caprio's fantastic performance, we never get inside Jim's head enough to understand him and why he is willing to give up on a fledging basketball career. This is a character that we're supposed to be praying for to overcome his addiction, but (spoilers!) when his clean-break arrived, I asked myself should I be feeling happy for this arsehole?

A well-acted film all-round, namely from the lead and Mark Wahlberg as his friend Mickey, but a film that is swamped in faults and scenes that are just ridiculous. Possibly only remotely remembered for the controversial scene where Jim storms his school with a shotgun in a drug-addled fantasy, which was caught up in the media storm surrounding the Columbine High School massacre. Watch only for signs of early promise from Di Caprio, but otherwise avoid.


Directed by: Scott Kalvert
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Lorraine Bracco, Mark Wahlberg, Bruno Kirby, James Madio
Country: USA

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie