Fundamentally Derivative of Goodfellas

Rating: Null/10 (28 December 2014)

Power, drugs, excess, debauchery, criminality, downfall, backstabbing, ruin, and the moral of the story is that when the party's over, you cash in your chips and sell everyone out to keep out of jail, and spend the rest of your days suffering the misfortune of being ordinary, as if that's a worthy punishment for being criminally despicable.
Sound familiar? That's because I just described the same tale told in Scorsese's far superior Goodfellas, over 20 years earlier. At least in that film you have the stigma of the Mafia, a culture which it captures with pinpoint accuracy. In this one you just have one self-aggrandizing twit's personal recounting of his life, slathered with what felt to me like generous amounts of exaggeration and outright bullshit.
Go watch American Hustle instead. The acting, which is the saving grace of this film, is just as good in that one. Marty should know better than to retread the same turf. Just because it's not a mafia movie doesn't mean it's not rehash. I expect better from him than Tarantino.