A truly god-like masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (23 January 2011)

First off, the Academy Awards have been wrong before like with Raging Bull in 1980 or with Gangs of New York in 2002 but the Academy really screwed over Goodfellas in 1990. It received 6 nominations including Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay but it only walked away with Joe Pesci's astounding supporting actor roll. The movie starts with the narration which sort of guides you in the right direction if you don't know what the hell is going on but it is pretty hard to loose track. Ray Liotta gives the performance of his career as mobster Henry Hill who was arrested in 1980 and went into Witness Protection to save his ass from his "pals". Scorsese takes the gangster genre to another level with this film, he uses Thelma Schoonmaker to give the movie amazing editing which it also deserved an Oscar for. But...Robert DeNiro steals the show as Hill's close friend and mentor Jimmy Conway who is a veteran at being a thief, gunman, and hijacker. DeNiro steals the show as playing a wise guy/nice guy and a ruthless killer and lets not forget about Pesci who just plays a freakin' psycho who doesn't give a crap about human life. You screw with him, you're dead. You're nice to him, watch out cause he doesn't care. He kills for fun but he;s even crazier when insulted. Scorsese deserved a Best Director Oscar because in my life of watching many films and studying them, there is not quite a film like Goodfellas. It is the modern version of The Godfather. Excellent film and worth the 145 minutes to watch.