OK movie review time again, plenty of these been done already, so why not do another??? This is pretty much what this blog is now, tennis and movie critiques! (but some different posts will follow at some point).
Anyways I thought I would take a look at another Martin Scorsese classic, Goodfellas, which is based on the real life exploits of the former gangster Henry Hill who was associated with the Luchesse crime family based in New York. The film itself starts in 1955 with Henry as a teenager who lives in East Brooklyn ad he longs to become one of the "wiseguys" and chooses to work for them at the local cabstand. However Henry's father soon finds out he has not been at school and beats him, as he doesn't want his son to have anything to do with the mob. However the mobsters manage to put a stop to this by threatening the local mailman by putting his "fuckin head in the oven first!" if he delivers another letter to Henry's house. After this Henry works full time under the wing of the boss Paulie Cicero (Paul Sorvino) and he also meets his two associates the smooth talking but lethal Jimmy "The Gent" Conway (Robert De Niro) and the psychotic loose canon Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci). After being pinched by the cops for selling cigarettes off the back off a truck, Henry is taken to court, but tells them nothing, and is eventually let go where Jimmy tells him "Never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut".
As the film moves into the 1960s, Henry now in his 20s (as is Tommy) are making a solid living stealing cargo from the local airports, and they also pull off the Air France robbery, which sees Henry move up the ranks. By this time Henry also meets his soon to be wife Karen (Lorraine Bracco) a Jewish girl from the Five Towns in New York, initially they dont get on well, and Henry stood her up on their second date, but after Karen confronts him about it, Henry makes it up to her. After this Henry charms Karen with the glamourous side of his life, as he takes her out on expensive dates for meals and drinks. Henry also at one point defends her, by brutally beating up an abusive neighbour of Karen's, and despite her initial shock toward the incident, she admits that it turned her on, and soon after they marry.
Now into the 1970s, where things start to get more heavy as Henry and Jimmy host a party for Billy Batts (Frankie Vincent) who is a made man with the Gambino crime family. During the party, Tommy arrives with his date, where Billy first off warmly greets Tommy but then proceeds to wind him up about his past when he was just a boy who shined shoes, this drives Tommy mad (or madder than before) and he threatens Billy then leaves. Later on Tommy comes back and with Jimmy they both brutally beat up Billy, and later stab and kill him, and soon after bury his body out in the woods. With Batts being a made guy, this causes a serious problem for the three of them as they killed him without consent. And during this period Tommy's psychosis continues as he first off berates and shoots a young hood Spider (Michael Imperioli) in the foot for not getting him drink, and then later shoots Spider dead for talking back to him. Round about this time Henry also starts an affair with a girl Janice Rossi (Gina Mastrogiacomo), but Karen soon finds out about it and rows furiously with him, which leads to Karen becoming hysterical and confronting Henry, pointing a gun at him while they lie on bed, but Henry soon slaps her and takes the gun off her and shouts at her that he's got enough to worry about without coming home to this, and leaves. Soon after, Paulie expresses his concerns about Karen, but insists he can put things to rights, and in the meantime Henry go off with Jimmy on business down to Florida. However on beating up a bookie, things soon go awry as the bookie's sister is revealed to be a typist for the FBI, who gives them up, and Henry, Jimmy and Paulie serve a prison sentence.
After Henry is released, he gets involved in drug dealing (behind Paulie's back who insisted Henry doesn't get involved in it) and he also comes across a very appealing business proposal from his friend and local mobster Morrie Kessler (Chuck Law). This turns out to be the legendary Lufthansa heist at JFK airport, where Jimmy and a small crew pull off a robbery where they steal over 6 million dollars However as a result of the robbery, the crew all buy expensive things with their cut of the money, which infuriates Jimmy who expressly told them not to buy anything as it would attract unwanted attention. Soon after Jimmy has the participants of the heist murdered by Tommy in order to cut any link between himself and the robbery, this includes Morrie, Henry's close friend. Once the dust has cleared from the heist, Tommy receives the good news that he is set to be "made" and ingratiated into the crime family as a proper member. But it soon turns out to be a setup as Tommy is taken into a room by Tuddie (Paulie's brother) and is shot dead, as a revenge for killing Billy Batts and various other things.
By the time we hit 1980, Henry gets involved even heavier in his drug deals and is trying to set up a deal with his associates in Pittsburgh. But by now Henry is a total dishevelled mess, addicted to cocaine and has become increasingly paranoid. However before Henry can get the deal underway he is arrested by narcotics police and he is sent to jail, where Henry fears he may be murdered by his crime partners in case he rats them out. After posting bail, Henry meets with Jimmy who for the first time asks him to do a hit on someone who was supposedly the rat who snitched on them, but Henry realises its a setup because if he decided to go along with the hit, he himself would be killed. Henry afterward realises he has little choice but to become involved in the witness protection program in order to save his own life and his family.
Right from the start you just know that Goodfellas is a classic film, that certainly isn't far off the level of The Godfather. The first scene which definitely ranks as one of the most violent opening scenes in American cinema where Tommy and Jimmy finish off Batts, really grabs you by the throat and pulls you into the film straight off. The characters in Goodfellas are certainly very vividly drawn and Henry Hill himself is far from an angel, but he does appear to be a man who is out of his depth in this world. He is surrounded by vicious thieves and murderers and while he is a thief himself, he isn't murder, and as Hill in real life himself said, he lived in constant fear 24 hours a day, fearing that he might be killed himself at any moment. Hill's narration in the film is also really contrary with the events that occur in the film where he says he loved the life, and the thrill he got from it, but you also see Henry's utter shock and fear at his associates behaviour. This is probably best displayed in the scene after Tommy and Jimmy brutally bludgeon Billy Batts and stick him the boot of their car, they then go and have dinner at Tommy's mother's house, and Henry sits silently, while Tommy and Jimmy laugh and joke, despite what they have just done. But at the end of the film even though he is living in the witness protection program, he still has the nerve to complain about how boring and inconvenient has life has become since leaving the crime life behind. Yet if it wasn't for the program he would have been dead long ago, since then Henry Hill himself said how grateful he was for the program and that it did save his life, although he has since had a few lapses and gotten in trouble with the law for drink and drug abuse.
However Jimmy and Tommy are far from sympathetic as they come across as the vicious bastards they no doubt were in real life, and no doubt in real life they were much worse. Tommy's character was for example based on Thomas DeSimone, Hill's real life criminal associate who Hill himself described as a "sick deadly fuck, who would kill your rather than steal", DeSimmone also in reality attempted to rape Karen Hill as well.
Performance wise there is precious little to fault here as the cast are all really strong and on top form. Ray Liotta is great as Henry Hill, as he starts off as a suave well dressed gangster, but ends up a total mess, burnt out on cocaine. Liotta perfectly grasps the (fancy word here) Hill's ambivalent emotions about the life, as one minute he loves the thrill of stealing, but the next he fears for his life. De Niro is also really good as Jimmy Conway, he plays him with just the right amount of charm and menace. Paul Sorvino also does really well as Paulie Cicero, its basically a part he initially found really difficult to capture, until he saw a look he gave in a mirror which scared the hell out of him! And he adopts this menacing look throughout the film, and his best scene comes when he confronts Henry about drug dealing. Lorraine Bracco is terrific as Karen Hill, and she is a far cry from the quiet wives off The Godfather as such as Kay and Connie. Karen is far more fesity and has the guts to stand up to Henry and confront him about his infidelities, and she also remains strong when Henry serves his time in prison. But the best performance in the film comes from Joe Pesci as the hot headed and aggressive crook Tommy, and its great how he can take his small demeanour and turn himself into quite a chilling but at the same time amusing bad guy. Pesci's famous scene where he asks Henry "funny how?" is a great example of Pesci's intensity and ability to play a scene as being both funny and menacing all at once.
The film itself has only a few flaws, but the main one unfortunately however has to be that after Tommy's character is bumped off, the film takes a dip and the energy and momentum of the film drops. In the last 30 minutes or so, its all about Henry's frantic state of mind as he tries to put his drug deal together, and picking up his brother from hospital and getting him to stir the tomato sauce for their dinner, while at the same he is paranoid about helicopters following him outside. It all becomes a bit bogged down with inconsequential details at this point, and all Henry's running around really drags the pace of the film down. However it does feature a great moment where Karen meets up with Jimmy who says he has some dresses for Karen to look at, which are in the back of Jimmy's warehouse in an alleyway, but Karen out of fear choses not to look and drives away in her car. But the end of the film does feel like a bit of an anti-climax, which is a shame as the rest of it is so good.
Technically though the film is just as good as anything Scorses has done, as there are many great scenes, the scene where Henry escorts Karen through the bowels the club they are going to in order to skip the queue at the front door is definitely one of the most memorable. I also love the pull in zoom shot where Henry meets with Jimmy in a diner toward the end where they discuss Henry's case. Scorsese's also put together a terrific soundtrack for the film and his choice of music is perfect in each scene with such artists as The Rolling Stones, Donovan, The Sex Pistols, George Harrison and Cream.
Soooo that's my review and analysis of Goodfellas over with, its a real classic no doubt it and if you haven't seen it well sort it out right now and get to it!
That it for now.
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