Looking Back On an Instant Classic

Rating: 10/10 (16 November 2013)

Director Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas is an American crime film based on the non-fiction book, Wiseguy written by Nicholas Pileggi. Pileggi used real life interviews with Henry Hill to create Wiseguy. GoodFellas takes viewers into the world of real organized crime in the Lucchese family from 1955 to 1980. GoodFellas features an all-star cast of Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, and Paul Sorvino. GoodFellas was convincing because it used a very established cast. De Niro had experience working in other mob films before such as The Godfather Part II where he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. De Niro, along with Pesci, worked with Scorsese before in his 1980 film, Raging Bull, where De Niro won the Academy Award for Best Actor.
What Scorsese did extraordinary well with GoodFellas was creating a movie where the story was historically accurate with Hollywood drama that makes a film successful using engrossing characters and dramatic scenes. The story begins with Henry Hill (Liotta) who states, "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster," which shows his admiration and eagerness to join to mob. Hill starts out as a boy who did errands for the mob organizer, Paulie. Soon Hill grows up to be a wise and willing mobster and it doesn't take long for others to notice him. Hill soon gets involved with fellow mobsters Jimmy (De Nero) and Tommy (Pesci), who steal, embezzle, and whack fellow mobsters. Scorsese makes us feel Hill's intoxication with this crime family. Hill is obliviously thrilled with the danger of being in the mob and he fully embraces it. Membership of course comes with a big price because the only way out of the mob is by going into hiding or death. When Hill says at the end of the film, "I'm an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook", moviegoers see how thoroughly he's bought into the mob mentality. He doesn't know how to live any other way, and he fears normal life.
Scorsese's screenplay with GoodFellas was done in an innovative way because he wanted to make the sequences go out of order. When the film begins, a major whack scene from the middle of the film is shown at the beginning and the viewers don't know why. Soon the movie rewinds to the beginning and the scenes go middle, forward, and backwards. Scorsese wanted those scenes short and scattered because the impact on the audience later on would be terrific once everything soaks in. To add more authenticity, Scorsese wanted the movie's soundtrack to match the scene time periods. If a scene took place in 1971, you would only hear a song from that year or older such as Eric Clapton's, "Layla." Viewers who grew up in the 1950's though 1970's will enjoy the movie's nostalgic, classic rock soundtrack.
GoodFellas does not fall short on violence. No actor in the film better depicts a better example of a cold mobster than Joe Pesci as Tommy DeVito. As Tommy, Pesci shows us how psychopathic mobsters see the world and how they treat the people in it. The way Tommy casually whacks people will have a memorable impact on the audience and put more fear of the mobsters into them. Pesci truly has you believing he is a narcissistic, maniac.
GoodFellas accomplished exactly what it was set out to do. Scorsese wanted to take real life crime events based on Henry Hill's interviews from Wiseguy and incorporate it into film where everyone could see just how the mob functioned in the mid-to late 20th century. GoodFellas is a prodigious achievement that puts this film into the categories of one of the best mob movies of all time.