Not good, a great movie about some really bad fellas

Rating: 9/10 (13 January 2013)

Goodfellas is one of the best mafia films you'll ever been blessed to see in your lifetime, right down to the letter in terms of acting, directing, but especially scripting. I have this fantastic script in book form, where the film honors the script one hundred percent. Goodfellas is quite a scary movie in terms of it's character's attributes, the main one being Pesci's, his Tommy, played with such a haunting ferocity. This is the most scary performance I've seen in a mafia film. He makes the character he played in Casino, Nicky Santori, look tame, although the the two bare some resemblances, especially in the violence and recklessness department. The story is told through the eyes of mafia figure, Henry Hill, played superbly by Ray Liotta, his most notable performance, when the mentioning of this actor's name comes up. Hill who died a while back, had described the mafia as a dark and terrifying world as seen through this brilliant film. It's through his eyes we meet these characters, like Jimmy the Gent, Conway, De Niro excelling himself again, and also Paul Sorvino as Paulie Cicero, a Sicilian godfather less threatening cause of his laid back manner, but looks can be deceiving. We move through Henry's wannabe mafia type, from childhood, that had him skipping school, subjecting him to a whacking from his father here and there, right through to his two incarcerations, where after getting out of the second one, thanks to his mother in law who puts up bail, he is soon making a deal of immunity. Reasons. One, his wife (Bracco) who goes to see Deniro is pointed towards this alley where all these coats are hanging. Should she go in there? No, why? Cause she'll probably get whacked. She options to quickly take off instead. To me, this was the most terrifying moment in this near two and a half hour film. Two, the other reason, Deniro asks Liotta to whack a guy down in Miami, and knows that if he accepts this, he won't came back alive. Death is shown so cheaply here, where if you don't do the right thing, the probability of living is null. One of the hoods, Stax, played by Samuel L Jackson in one of it's memorable bloody scenes, is one such an example, where a montage of other victims follow. Goodfellas has some real bloody moments, one involving a connected guy who's celebrating, getting out, on Henry's Hill's actual birthday, where his mouth earns him a helluva of a bashing, followed by a freshly dug grave. When it comes to violence, this movie is uncompromising, but these thugs existed. Again at Goodfellas's end, as to Hill's living arrangements, once more we see that crime just doesn't pay, but it pays bloody well to seen this 1990 classic.