Overrated and horribly mean-spirited

Rating: 5/10 (2 August 2013)

Goodfellas is lauded as an amazing film, better than The Godfather and possibly the greatest mobster film of all time if not the greatest overall film. This is ridiculous.
Our protagonist, Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), says he always wanted to be gangster. When he joins the mob, he and his friends experience the high-standard and high-risk life of gangsters. So the film follows his new life till its end.
I'll agree the directing and writing was impressive. Acting was well-performed too. The narrative told through the voice-over of Henry Hill and occasionally his wife (Lorraine Bracco) is enjoyable and the general progression of the storyline is good. Nice pacing, etc. I was definitely interested and the movie kept me submersed.
The biggest problem with this film, for me, were the characters. Almost none of them were likable. Henry Hill was a drug-addict, and sold drugs even though his long-time friend and boss Paulie Cicero specifically told him not to. Hill constantly gets into arguments with his wife, once threatening to kill her, and yet constantly cheats on her. He's always going on about how regular people are losers who don't know how to get on in life and acting like they deserve to have their livelihood taken from them. That's another thing: he steals whole shipments from truck drivers and airports.
Now I like gang movies as much as the next guy. The same goes for dark, depraved films. They're interesting. But I finished this movie with a unsatisfied, irritated feeling. I don't know how anyone could like these characters. By the end of the film I was waiting to see them all get their comeuppance. Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) is a maniac. He kills people left and right and for just mildly insulting him. He brutally murdered his life-long friend Billy Batts. Tommy shot and killed a kid because the boy told him to "go f*** yourself" and that was because he had already been shot in the foot by DeVito and the man just kept making fun of the kid. Sure the boy (his name was Spider) wasn't a teenager, but he was definitely in his twenties, probably early twenties. Not to mention Morris Kessler and that other guy from the restaurant. DeVito owed both of them money and when they patiently asked for it, he killed one of them and nearly killed the other. I wasn't sad when DeVito got "whacked" instead being made. I only wished his death was a little more painful instead of a simple shot to the head.
Anyway, Henry's wife Karen was also a bit of an jerk. She also threatens to kill him, and while most of her motives are reasonable, she doesn't have many redeemable traits. The same goes for pretty much all of the other main characters. Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) was unlikable and trigger-happy. Paulie was probably the only main character who wasn't a complete jerk. He, at least, had some common sense.
I know this is a gangster film, and this is based on real-life events and maybe its bleak violence could be considered "edgy." But this is definitely not better than The Godfather or other gangster films like The Untouchables. At least the characters in The Godfather were likable. They had a sense of honor and reason. I liked Vito Corleone, I liked Michael and Sonny and a bunch of the other characters. When they killed, it was for a better reason than these lunatics. When some of them got killed, I felt sad for them.
I guess the movie's overall production value is good, but it doesn't redeem it and it certainly doesn't make it better than The Godfather. If you're going to make characters who do horrible things, you have to do it for a better purpose. There needs to be depth or reasoning. This whole thing was needlessly mean-spirited. For me, the despicable characters ruined the whole experience. For you, it may not. That's just my opinion.