One of the best films ever----10/10

Rating: 10/10 (29 July 2003)

I once read a story about Martin Scorsese's battle with cocaine addiction and how Robert De Niro saved his life one way or another by visiting him in the hospital and convincing him to get back to work and make Raging Bull. I started to think that if it wasn't for that, we may never have seen Goodfellas. So if the above is true, thank you Bobby and Marty for making it possible.
Goodfellas is one of the very best movies i have ever seen. It's story, it's dialouge, it's visual style, and it's characters force us to sit up and pay attention to the story of a guy who as far back as he could remember always wanted to be a gangster. In what should have been an Oscar-winning performance (more on that later), Ray Liotta delivers as Henry Hill, a half-Irish half-Italian New Yorker who joins the local mob and is introduced to a life most people never have the chance to live. He meets a pretty but fiery woman named Karen (Lorraine Bracco), makes best friends Jimmy (Robert De Niro) and Tommy (Joe Pesci), and becomes a mob saint when he helps pull off a multi-million dollar heist. Slowly but surely, however, the good life turns sour as he cheats on his wife, the heist eventually costs him everything he has and some very dear friends, and he is forced to testify against the people who gave him so much and enter witness protection.
Martin Scorsese moves the story along with quick pace, by using hilarious, violent, and emotional scenes alternately. We see Hill's life deteriorate by keeping the glamour and the women at the beginning and the addictions and paranoia towards the end. It is an absolute shame that this film didn't win Best Director (which Scorsese should have one countless times by now), let alone Best Picture, Actor, Supporting Actress, and Adapted Screenplay. This is the reason i don't care for the Oscars anymore. One thing the Academy did do right is give Joe Pesci the Best Supporting Actor award. Never has a character been so funny and so terrifying all in the same film. Pesci was another reason the 2 and a half hour film goes by in a snap.
Goodfellas, in my opinion, is even better than the Godfather. While the Godfather may have Marlon Brando's brilliant performance and more visually pleasing locations, Goodfellas is a true gangster picture based on reality and more adaptable to modern times. It is not only a classic, it is a masterpiece. 10/10