Superb on the surface, but missing depth.

Rating: 8/10 (30 March 2020)

Having heard lots about this film and many people describe this as one of the greatest films ever, I went in with high hopes. Two and a half hours later, I would say although I enjoyed it, I was expecting more. I guess this film, much like Martin Scorsese's also largely successful Wolf of Wall Street, just felt too linear. Slickly filmed, with a variety of film techniques such as the freeze-frames and narration. A wonderful cast full of amazing performances, most of all by Joe Pesci playing Tommy DeVitto. Incredible. Despite all this, it still felt like something was missing. Understandably this and WoWS are both based on true stories so they aren't blessed with the capability to add the twists and turns of a fictitious story, but it just felt that the movie went on, and on, until eventually it was over; without really too much of significance happening. We knew there would be shootings and deaths, this is a gangster film afterall, but any problem encountered was dealt with so easily that it no longer seemed a problem to begin with. Even in the final sequences where the main character had such a big decision to make, turning on his lifelong friends, somehow I barely felt anything. Perhaps another director could have squeezed more emotion out of those scenes and then, for me, this could be further up there, with the greatest films of all time that many have described this as. Nevertheless, 8/10 for me, a magnificent film on the surface but seriously lacking any depth.