The quintessential mob movie

Rating: 10/10 (11 January 2014)

This is the greatest mob movie that I have ever watched, better than The Godfather, Donnie Brasco or The Untouchables, it is perfection and no doubt my favourite movie. On the face of it this movie isn't that impressive, the rise and fall of a couple of mobsters but the way Scorsese brings the characters to life is superb and what makes this film. There is no scene in the film were you think 'was that really necessary,' every scene is amazing and only adds to the suspense. The main actors of Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta put in the performance of there careers in this movie, there is a great juxtaposition between the brash psychotic nature of Joe Pesci's character and Robert DeNiro's character against the softer Henry Hill(Ray Liotta's character). The focus of the film is undoubtedly on Henry Hill not DeNiro or Pesci's characters, you witness his rise through the mob as he gets deeper and deeper into the most dangerous of professions and then his fall from grace, this occurs over the last 50 minutes and is truly captivating. The script in this film is fantastic as well, the way the characters bounce off each other seems so smooth and the fact that a huge number of scenes are improvised only adds the the natural chemistry between characters,the whole "why am I funny scene" is improvised. To conclude this film puts no step wrong and in my opinion is the benchmark for all gangster films, the acting and the script is what makes this film so special and it has yet to be matched by anything.