An intoxicating tour de force

Rating: 10/10 (25 February 2010)

It's as if Scorsese peeked into their lives. Eavesdropped on every conversation they had. Took note of every little thing. Otherwise how can one justify this movie that provides the closest look EVER into the lives of mob soldiers? By focusing on a group of small-time street guys - hijackers of booze, cigarettes and what-not, and narrating their story, Scorsese paints a larger picture. It is essentially this approach, this perspective from the bottom rung of the ladder that reveals to us like never before the inner workings of the mob, its rules, its values (or lack of them). The result is a threadbare exposé of mob life, a horrifying tale of greed and violence. The result is "Goodfellas".
"As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster" – reminisces Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), an aspiring Irish-Italian hood who will never be "made" and allowed into the family, who will always have to scrounge for existence at the fringes of power. With his mentor Jimmy "the gent" Conway(De Niro) and a gun-wielding, short-fused psychopath Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) by his side, Hill lives his dream. He earns money for himself and for the family, but stays inside the line, because, if "you get out of line, you get whacked". Then the Lufthansa Heist comes along, and little by little, things start to go haywire. Fidelity among fellow gangsters evaporates only to leave the slime of violent greed. And in the end, ironically, Hill must get out of line in order to save himself from the very people he idolized. He must rat out.
The screenplay by Scorsese and Pileggi remains faithful to the original book and is a-w-e-s-o-m-e. No one will feel the absence of Paul Schrader here. But it takes the brilliance of Scorsese to take those words and turn them into unforgettable scenes on the celluloid. Take, for example, the scene when Henry takes Karen to the Copa through a back-door. The whole scene from the car to the Copa stage is filmed in a single shot, with a steadicam following Henry and Karen as they move through winding hallways and kitchen. The technical complexity of the shot is matched only by its extraordinary vision. Through this single shot Karen, virtually a stranger to Henry's way of life gets a taste of what power can be, of how seductive and intoxicating it can be. Scorsese redefines cinematic language in this film. The piano coda in "Layla" or Donovan's "Atlantis" will never be the same for someone after they've seen "Goodfellas". Yes, it's THAT powerful.
I've often wondered how this film is complementary to "The Godfather". While "Goodfellas" discerns mob life through the eyes of a lower-strata soldier, "The Godfather" deals with the upper echelons of the mafia syndicate. But they meet somewhere. From the bribing of senators in "The Godfather" to the bribing of prison guards in "Goodfellas", from the wiping out of the heads of the crime families in "The Godfather" to the gangland executions of mob enforcers in "Goodfellas"– they meet somewhere. The actions, the emotions, the motives – they all meet somewhere. They meet and create the whole picture. A picture that is brutal, but true nonetheless.
We were waiting for the other half of that picture since 1972. Our wait ended with "Goodfellas".