Brash, energetic, and brilliantly directed Mob movie

Rating: 10/10 (23 June 2007)

"Goodfellas" is a superb movie presenting an amoral and very real-seeming portrait of the Mafia. Where "The Godfather" limits itself to a sepia palette and a somber tone, "Goodfellas" is brash, busy, and captures both the humor and the horror of a mobster's life. Nor do the Goodfellas pretend to have noble motivations. Instead, they're a bunch of power-hungry guys who band together for protection but double-cross each other at the first opportunity. Many admit to a compulsive love for crime, including robber Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) and, especially, the unhinged, trigger-happy Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci).
Tommy and Jimmy are the closest associates of Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), the movie's narrator and main character: all are mid-level mob guys who start out around the same time. Henry is half-Irish, so he knows that the Mafia will never fully welcome him. This outsider quality complicates his personality and makes him an ideal narrator.
"Goodfellas" runs on style and atmosphere rather than a linear plot. The first hour culminating in the famous long-take at the Copacabana nightclubshows the glamorous appeal of the mob lifestyle for young Henry. It's the Rat Pack early sixties, and America and the mob are still somehow innocent. As we follow Henry into the late sixties and beyond, the mob becomes more insular and a parody of what it once was. The women have tacky outfits and hard-edged faces; the men's crimes get bigger. Henry gets involved in drug dealing, and his wife Karen (Lorraine Bracco) turns from a tough-but-sweet Jewish girl into a full- fledged Mafia wife.
The best part of the movie is the virtuoso, suspenseful, darkly funny sequence (it could almost stand on its own as a short film) where Henry's responsibilities as mobster and family man threaten to overwhelm him. In the course of a single day, he must keep his drug smuggling, mafia connections, large extended family, and mistress under control, while trying to evade a helicopter that seems to be following him. The editing and music perfectly recreate Henry's jittery, cocaine-fueled paranoia. Indeed, "Goodfellas" has probably the best compilation soundtrack that I've ever heard: each song perfectly fits.
There is always so much going on at once in "Goodfellas"music, narration, dialogue, camera movements and imagesthat boredom is not an option and dazzling moments come frequently. And its ambivalent moral perspective (should we love these men and their lifestyle, or hate them?) gives you something to think about after the pop songs and shootings have ended.