Tedious cartoon characterizations

Rating: 2/10 (2 June 2013)

Many people think Scorsese is a great director because he is a skilled craftsman who produces a clear realization of his own weirdly fractured vision. Given the reverence with which some people treat his work, any criticism may be viewed as sacrilege.
However, this film is filled with wooden, cartoon characterizations of real people. They do very ugly things to each other, but without any understanding of their motivations.
The movie drags on far too long thanks to countless scenes that should have been shortened or cut (e.g., the endlessly long prison kitchen scene). The transitions between different phases of the movie are abrupt and without explanation. For instance, the transition to drug addiction and trafficking comes out of nowhere when the main character pulls pills out of his pocket and swallows them on his way to jail in a limousine. No drug use is shown or even hinted at prior to that scene.
While the movie certainly progresses over time, and there is definitely plot development, the cardboard characters don't really change, and every scene seems like a repeat of something we just saw.
Unlike "The Godfather," to which this film is sometimes compared because they both depict the "inner workings" of the East Coast Mafia, there is no deeper insight into any part of the human condition, and only the shallowest revelations about why the Mafia even exists. The only thing we are given -- explained in clumsy narration at the end of the movie -- is that all the participants are drawn to each other because they enjoy a sense of belonging: of being "good fellas." While the irony between that explanation and the extended depiction of these beautifully bonded people eating their own is certainly acknowledged, in the end none of it really makes sense, and we are reminded of that too-frequently quoted Shakespeare line:
It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing
Macbeth was clearly talking about Goodfellas.