This might just be Scorcese's greatest film

Rating: 10/10 (3 September 2007)

Some people favour "Raging Bull" but the biggest buzz you are likely to get from a Scorcese movie will come from "Goodfellas" and because of it his name will be indelibly linked with 'gangster' films for evermore. If "The Godfather" films, (well, parts 1 and 2 anyway), represent the greatest single achievement in the genre taken as a whole, "Goodfellas" is still probably the pinnacle of the old-fashioned gangster movie per se. It's based on fact, and by all accounts very accurately, but its genesis lies in the Warner Brothers films of the 1930's, (which, of course, were 'torn from the headlines', so to speak).
It is the story of a life, that of Henry Hill, lived in the pursuit of crime, seen first as a boy, (Christopher Serrone), and then as a man, (Ray Liotta). He's one of the narrators, (the other is his wife, who throws her own jaundiced eye on the events in her husband's life), and it is through him we get to know a host of Runyonesque-named wise-guys and goodfellas, (gangsters all). The difference, of course, is that Runyon made them cuddly whereas Scorcese and his co-writer Nicholas Pileggi, on whose book the film is based, makes them vicious. To most of these guys killing is second nature; they don't give a moment's thought to kicking a man to death or shooting a barhop dead for giving back-chat. And perhaps it is that impulsiveness that is their downfall. They can plan one of the biggest heists in US history but they can't control their tempers.
It is, then, a very violent, (and foul-mouthed), movie and I can see why it won't be everybody's bucket of blood but if you love movies at all you can't help but love "Goodfellas". Scorcese brings to bear on the film a true film-maker's virtuosity; he loves the process of making movies and it shows in every frame, in every shot. Coupled with his innate understanding of the community in which "Goodfellas" is set, he has made a masterpiece. Everyone is working at a peak here; the editor, Thelma Schoonmaker; the cinematographer, Michael Ballhaus; the cast, as well as Liotta, never better, De Niro, Joe Pesci, Paul Sorvino, Lorraine Bracco. It could be argued that without movies like "Scarface", (the Hawks version), and "The Roaring Twenties", "Goodfellas" might not have existed. Likewise, without "Goodfellas" would we ever have had "The Sopranos"?