As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster

Rating: 9/10 (14 October 2012)

The film is based on Wiseguys, the true story of Henry Hill's rise & fall in the Luchesse crime family during 1955-80.
In 1950s Bronx, young Henry Hill admires gangsters who according to him live an ideal life.He quits school and joins the gang under Paulie (Paul Sorvino) , doing jobs like paying off people & collecting protection money. He meets Jimmy Conway (Robert DeNiro) whose main work is hijacking cargo trucks. He learns the biggest rule of crime life from him - Never rat on your friends & always keep your mouth shut.
In the 60s, the adult Henry(Ray Liotta) with Tommy Vito (Joe Pesci),a psychopathic gangster & Jimmy work to spread the gang's influence. Henry & the others hang around with numerous women in nightclubs in an intimidating manner .In 1967, Henry carries out the Air France robbery thereby making his entry into bigtime crime. He marries a Jewish girl Karen (Lorraine Bracco) who is seduced by his glamorous lifestyle. She accepts his crime life, mostly because it gives her an opulent living.
In 1970 Tommy brutally beats Billy Batts (Frank Vincent) for insulting his poor origins, Jimmy too joining in. They are in trouble as Batts is a made man with the Gambinos. They bury him in the outskirts of the city, stopping midway to finish off the half alive Batts. Later they are forced to exhume and rebury the corpse elsewhere when they find out that the land due to a new construction project.
Henry soon takes a mistress. Karen pulls a gun on him, he overpowers her and tells her that he has bigger worries than her, like getting killed on the street. Paulie meets him and orders him to return to her, and sends him with Jimmy to recover money from a defaulter. But the target's sister is a typist with FBI, she turns over the entire gang (her brother included) to the police. In order to make his ends meet, Henry resorts to drug running from jail.
Upon release from prison in 1978,he continues his cocaine trading which he had started in jail, much to the disapproval of Paulie who sternly warns him to stop it immediately. He not only ignores this warning, but ropes in Jimmy and Tommy and various other people, including Karen, his daughters babysitter and a new drug addict girlfriend.
The same year, Henry along with the crew, carries out the Lufthansa heist in JFK airport , which is the biggest hijacking of goods in US history.Some gang members start spending the proceeds from the heist immediately, buying expensive things that put them in the spotlight. Jimmy promptly has them murdered and later on,also has one by one all the other participants of the heist murdered, their corpses turning up in different parts of the city for months. Henry knows that Jimmy has all the cash from the heist, and he is merely eliminating the partners to have it all to himself, but cant do anything. One day, Tommy is lured by promises to make him a made man and killed, by his own gang members as a revenge for the murder of Billy Batts in order to make peace with the Gambinos.
By 1980, Henry is a cocaine addicted wreck, sustaining himself solely by drug running, due to which he has alienated Paulie and the others. He is on the constant surveillance of the FBI , who finally tail him an entire and arrest him. During his absence, his house is also raided, and Karen in order to evade arrest and conviction flushes down the entire cocaine stash, thereby rendering themselves virtually penniless.
Jimmy goes to Paulie for help, who being angry with him due to his drug operations, pays him $3200 and ends all association with him.He gets a final shock when he realizes that Jimmy intends to have him killed, by setting him up in a hit, in order to erase the last link between him and the Lufthansa heist.
With no other way to save himself and his family, Henry agrees to become an FBI informant under the witness protection plan. As a result of his collaboration and his testimony, Paulie, Jimmy and all the major members of the gang are arrested and sentenced to long terms in prison without parole. Henry himself gets a sentence which is further reduced due to his collaboration.
The last shot of the film shows a very vulnerable looking Henry Hill ,now divorced, who in a final voice over says that the good times are over and that he is penniless just like the average working people that he used to ridicule .The closing credits show his fate and that of all the others in the gang, being put away for life.
Scorsese maintains a good pace, with a crisp background narration. Gangsters are shown as what they are, vermin beneath the shining suits . It perfectly shows that crime never pays giving the message subtly, sans preaching or moral dialogues, instead leaving the viewer to figure it out as the film goes along.
Ray Liotta plays Henry efficiently, right from the background narration to his transition from a brash gangster to a sorry shadow of his former self. Lorraine Bracco is fine as Karen. Robert DeNiro very beautifully portrays the cunning & vicious Jimmy Conway ,a friend one instant and a killer the next, his screen time is shorter than usual but just as effective. But the show stealer is Joe Pesci as the psychopathic Tommy Vito who is crazy & vicious at the same time, as the one who intimidates Henry or the one who calmly shoots a waiter for being late in serving him.
Oscars snubbed this great work and only Joe Pesci got his due. But it rightly was a commercial & critical success and will always remain a favourite for any avid film viewer.