An Inside Look

Rating: 7/10 (2 April 2018)

Goodfellas is a wiseguy movie with them doing wiseguy things. You know: robbing and stealing. Beatings and wackings. Extorting and racketeering. Cussing and swearing. I don't want to minimize the movie to just that but that was the gist of it all.
The movie is told from the view of Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), a gangster that loved mob life and all it had to offer. Henry Hill is essentially doing a tell all about being a mobster and how mobs operate.
What I found most interesting about the movie my second time watching was how sanctimonious mobsters are. Almost like because they have rules that govern their illicit behavior they're better than other criminals. Sure, they'll rob, steal, kill and other crimes but their criminality is not like the criminality of others; almost like there is a nobility to their criminality. The reverence to that lifestyle and the Italian mafioso culture in general could be heard and felt throughout the movie. Henry Hill absolutely loved being a mobster. When I was younger I was fascinated by the lore of it as well (albeit from a great distance, as in from an audience watching on movies) but now I see them as criminals like anyone else. Granted, they are more successful at it than most and they have done very well with their PR but they are still criminals.
Goodfellas actually made me see that as Henry narrated about the beatings and killings of criminal and innocent people. Henry was wrapped into all kinds of lowlife activity. His two pals James Conway (Robert De Niro) and Tommy Devito (Joe Pesci) were savages that would murder anyone in their way. And Tommy would murder just because--he had to be the worst mafia representative ever. So, Goodfellas, if anything, was good for drawing back the curtain on how the seedy world of Italian mobs worked.