Best film of the decade

Rating: 10/10 (17 June 1999)

It happened again. Just as America's greatest living (greatest ever?) director created the best film of the decade in 1980 -- "Raging Bull" -- and lost the Oscar to Robert Redford's "Ordinary People" (an outrage by all accounts), yet another thespian's pretentious film -- Kevin Costner's "Dances With Wolves" -- beats out one of the best acted, best directed, most kinetically charged and most entertaining/horrifying films ever created... "GoodFellas"
This is one hell of a ride. Everything in the film is perfect. The soundtrack perfectly mirrors the time period (musically and lyrically, from "Rags to Riches" to "My Way"). Joe Pesci is a revelation. Of course he could be a thug, but they way his Tommy DeVito enters every shot as an unknown factor -- "Is he going to snap?" is the only thing we can think of -- gives the film an edge that would not have been the same with another actor. Robert DeNiro is, of course, terrific, and Ray Liotta inhabits the character unlike he's done since.
But the real star is Martin Scorsese. Just when it seems that "Raging Bull" would be his apex, I think "GoodFellas" may top it, on the basis of scope and technique. It's not just a man as in "Raging Bull" and "Taxi Driver," his other legendary works. It's a whole lifestyle, a way of being. And it follows three decades of a "family's" rise and fall. And there is never a slow or tedious moment. The movie is raw action. Whether it's the hellish tracking shots or the point of view shots or the way the trunk lets off an evil red glow, everything is for a reason. And the double voice-over technique is brilliant, because it gives two different perspectives of mafia life.
"GoodFellas" does not try to glorify the mob life... it just presents it as it is, blood and all. And 20 years from now tell me if "Ordinary People" and "Dances With Wolves" are that great...