my favorite film

Rating: 10/10 (12 January 2000)

"I'm an average nobody...I get to live the rest of my life like a shnook." So says Henry Hill, in one of the truly amazing denouements in film history. Here's a man who could've been easily killed off- at first by his wife, then by his own crew- and evaded it by sneaking out the 'easy' route. Yet Hill hasn't changed. He'll always complain about not having the good life anymore. The wrap-up makes totally clear what this saga is: the American dream realized as a given, and in the form of a corrupted mind-set.
Goodfellas is the "if-you-put-a-gun-to-my-head" favorite movie for me, and by that token appropriate as there are many a gun pointed at a head during the film, and sometimes with a big result (the most shocking when I first saw it, and still brutal on a big screen, is seeing Sam Jackson's brains splattered all across the room like it's some ritualistic slaughter). It's true bravura storytelling, without a single shot or moment that needs to be excised or missed. To say it's a 'perfect' movie might be overstating it; what is 'perfect', after all? Scorsese does strive for- and arguably succeeds- a kind of perfection in balancing comedy and drama, like a tightrope walker going above a bed of hot coals with a rambunctious Pesci threatening with scissors like the Oklahoma Kid.
You're almost afraid to laugh, and a good many times (especially if you've seen the film dozens of times like myself) you almost feel apart of the group of guys laughing about stuff that *shouldn't* be funny. But then there's what could be the greatest shot of the film, where we see a first-person of all the small-time hoods introducing themselves ("what's up guy?" "I'm gonna get the papers, get the papers"), where it's like we as the audience are let into the clubhouse, following them along into the back-room as they unload coats...wait, he needed suits, not coats.
It's endlessly watchable as a kind of raucous, dangerous pop entertainment, and it feels as though it's gone by in much briefer time than has actually passed in 146 minutes. Maybe as part of a subjective thing I can kind of relate to many of the characters, not so much because of what they do in their criminal deeds or Hill's mistress or feeding people to lions and whatnot, but the little ticks of behavior (a little note like when Hill rushes out of his coked-up girlfriend's apartment, laughing maniacally, is like any given day with my brother).
But a personal connection can only be so much to recommend this motion picture like no other. As one of the benchmarks of cinema of my generation it's got everything that many somewhat-to-big-time-sophisticated moviegoers look for: over-done classic scenes ("Am I a clown" is the "You're talking' to me" of the movie, and probably not even as great until the "last week this prick asked me to Christen his kid" line), iconoclastic techniques with the camera and editing (everything from the freeze frames to the music and narration to the shots that have the intensity of coke or full on rage and adrenaline in beating a guy's face in with a gun), and performances that should be considered essential to see for anyone becoming an actor years and years from now.
If there was ever an American film that could absorb, entertain, enthrall, and interest me on all fronts of style and substance as much as Goodfellas does on every viewing.