If the Godfather was what kickstarted the gangster movie genre, then Goodfellas is what peaked the scale. Director Martin Scorsese has spent a lifetime developing into the stories of organized crime’s biggest names, but the man can go to the grave happy knowing he has such an achievement on his credentials.
Goodfellas is a bio-pic regarding the Lucchese crime family run by Paulie Cicero (Paul Sorvino) looking to make a living outside a system of law and order. Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) has been under Paulie’s wing since he was a teenager and by the 1960s, he’s already up in the leagues doing the heavy duty crimes; murder, theft, extortion, you name it. But that’s where the story arc really begins.
See, Goodfellas is all about the pride before the fall, and Henry is proud of everything he’s earned and gotten out of his life’s work. He’s forged a family of cohorts who watch his back, he knows the system thoroughly about how to keep his dirty secrets under the carpet and from a young age he’s had the world handed to him by men he’s always looked up to. Goodfellas is a story about a man spending the majority of his adulthood in pure fantasy, and falling deeper into sin until that inevitable rude awakening.
Where this movie becomes really magnificent is the threads that pull the world together. The cast is chopped full of actors who would make the roles of mobsters some of the highlights of their career. Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, Frank Vincent; you name him, he’s in there. And they’re all right at home in their scenes, chopped full of dialogue you swear was ad-libbed with all the corrupted souls you can expect.
Plenty can be taken away from a movie like this on an artistic level, not just by seeing how to breakdown a mob movie or how a criminal operates. You might even find yourself sympathizing with people of a certain profession you might otherwise not have. Schnooks and wise guys can both find a common ground in liking Goodfellas.
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