There is something that Martin Scorsese can't do. There has to be. But evidently, that thing doesn't have anything to do with movies.

Rating: 10/10 (23 May 2001)

Martin Scorsese's stunning gangster film Goodfellas is the true story of Henry Hill, a man that wanted to be a gangster for as long as he can remember, and who lived as a gangster for a significant portion of his life. Scorsese seems to suggest that his tendency toward a life of crime comes as a result of an unhappy childhood, particularly the brutal beatings that he received from his father as a kid. Ray Liotta gives an excellent performance as Henry Hill, and Robert DeNiro is just a bad-ass in the film. He makes an awesome gangster, and he just looks intimidating and interesting and impressive. True, the guy is just a phenomenal actor, but he can also play extremely opposite roles, such as the one he played in Scorsese's Mean Streets in 1973, as well as the nutcase Travis Bickle in Scorsese's Taxi Driver. Joe Pesci, also a Scorsese regular, and also a tremendously diverse actor, plays the part of the undeniably likeable but quick-tempered and highly ambitious Tommy, one of the most violent gangsters portrayed in the film (by the way, his similarity to Edward G. Robinson's performance as Rico Bandello in Little Caesar (1930) is extensive and unmistakable). On a trivial note, look for Scorsese's mother playing the part of Tommy's loving mother (almost a staple in Italian cinema) in the film. It's interesting that for a good portion of her screen time, she is telling stories from the past, exactly as she did in Scorsese's rather short film Italianamerican, which starred his mother and father as themselves.
Scorsese clearly sees something of himself in the young Henry Hill, given his fairly impoverished and physically unhealthy childhood in New York's Little Italy, where he was always fascinated by organized crime. His unique and expressive direction works perfectly to present the story of the life of Henry Hill, with the overall purpose of showing what life in the Mafia is like. The power, the money, the women, the cars, the color coordinated wardrobe, the special treatment by just about everyone, everything that comes as a benefit of being a gangster. On the other hand, the dark side of organized crime is equally presented. We see the loyalty turned to betrayal, the senseless murders, the self-aggrandizing acts that lead to one's own downfall (especially seen in the way that Tommy kills a `made' man named Bask), the occasional crackdown by the law, etc. But even when in prison, they get extremely favorable treatment, with their quarters, their food, and pretty much everything else about their treatment.
(spoilers) Even the extensive length of the film serves to increase the effectiveness of this presentation of gangster life, because it provides time for Scorsese to completely immerse the audience in the world of the Mafia, rather than tell about the life of some gangster with a story that is over in 90 minutes. The movie spans a time period of about three decades, from Henry Hill's first involvement with the Mafia, basically as an errand boy, until his eventual betrayal of his betrayers, leaving him stuck to live the rest of his life `like a schnook.' Earlier in the film, DeNiro's character, James Conway, tells the young Henry Hill that he had learned a valuable lesson from his first run-in with the police - `Never rat on your friends, and ALWAYS keep your mouth shut.' Henry is proud of this, and even at the end of the film, when he opens his mouth and rats on his friends, it is clear that it is not the way that he wanted it all to end. The tragedy here is that he has to spend the rest of his life living in a way that he always despised, as a `normal' person.
Even as Henry goes to the police, Scorsese is still illustrating the practices and realities of the Mafia. Henry notes that the cops talked to him, which assured him that they were not associated with the Mafia, because `goodfellas' (this is what the gangsters called each other - `You'll like this guy, he's a goodfella.') would have just killed him. He wouldn't have even heard anything. The Italian influence in the film is obviously unmistakable, both in the stereotypical (and, in reality, generally incorrect) involvement with the Mafia as well as everything from the way that they dress to the strong family bonds and the delicious meals. Goodfellas is an uncompromising and brutally straightforward look at the inner workings of the Mafia that makes no effort to make anything easy to swallow. I've heard people complain about gratuitous violence in the movie, such as when Henry walks up to some guy on his driveway and pistol-whips him for sexually assaulting his sister. This is crap, of course, because the guy got exactly what he deserved. I think they should implement pistol-whipping in the US court system as a common punishment for sexual assault. The violence is not put into a movie like this to impress the younger male audience that looks for that, it's put here because that's the way the Mafia works. This is realism, not audience manipulation, and the spectacularly effective result is a tremendous accomplishment.