Scorcese at his best

Rating: 10/10 (26 January 2014)

No doubt, there are remarkable movies like Mean Street, Taxi Driver and even Ragging Bull. More contemporary ones like The Departed and Shutter Island are no less wonderful but Goodfellas is masterpiece in every way.
Though personally I was disappointed in first watch as I was expecting much more from De Niro Sir, but later on I figured out, ultimately it's not his story but Ray's. Die hard fan of De Niro and Scorsese combination may get disappointed but one has to understand that no one color is better than any other. And it's just the way writer and director has chosen Ray color more over De Niro color. Despite few hard to watch graphic scenes, this one has strange sense of humor that gives different perspective of Gangsters. They are humane in every way, except the way they choose to make money and their self respect for being gangsters. On one edge, we watched Godfather-where you will laugh only if you fooled yourself for not getting story or asking why would any Don go to shop fruits, Goodfellas has funny moment one after another, between friends, enemies, police/gangster, and my favorite one is one in Joe's dining table with his mother. Joe steals the show where ever he is but as we watch him from Ray's perspective, we laugh even louder as Ray finds Joe's jokes much more funny than they actually are. I am dying to see Scorsese coming back to this phase where we get to watch, have fun and ultimately take home a huge lesson. I mean, there are movies where we see character arcs, but this one is brilliant in so many ways. It is not boring at all, and the shift in the arc is almost perpendicular as we know Ray from very beginning that all he wanted to be is Gangster and by the end of film, we see him as someone else.