The Best Film Ever Made, Bar None

Rating: Null/10 (28 January 2000)

Working from a smart script based on Henry Hill's actual life story (as told to Nicholas Pileggi), Scorsese directs the best movie ever made about life in the mean, violent world of the gangster. The combination of a tight, interesting plot and vividly realized characters always makes for a good film, but the realism imbued by Hills story makes this a truly superior gangster flick.
The screenplay (Co-written by Scorsese and Pillegi) and the cinematography capture the sudden violence of the street in a way you don't see in most over produced set pieces (think Die Hard). What most impresses me is how penetrating and accurate Ray Liotta's voiceovers are. The freeze frames and quick cuts between characters vividly convey the way a player figures things out when working the streets; showing how they compute the angles and figure out what lurks beneath the surface, is masterful, conveying a realism I've never seen in film, especially not in some stylized crime films like the Godfather.