Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) admits, "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster." As a boy, Henry idolized the Lucchese crime family gangsters in his blue-collar, predominantly Italian neighborhood in East New York, Brooklyn, and in 1955 quit school and went to work for them. The local mob capo, Paul Cicero (Paul Sorvino) (based on the actual Lucchese mobster Paul Vario) and Cicero's close associate Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) (based on Jimmy Burke) help cultivate Henry's criminal career.
As adults, Henry and his associate Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci in his Academy Award-winning performance) conspire with Conwt ay to steal some of the billions of dollars of cargo passing through Idlewild Airport (now known as JFK International Airport). They help out in a key heist, stealing over half a million dollars from the Air France cargo terminal. The robbery helps Henry gain more of Cicero's trust. However, because Henry is half-Irish, he knows he can never become a "made man", a full member of the crime family. Nor can Jimmy Conway, who is also Irish.
Henry's friends become increasingly daring and dangerous. Conway loves hijacking trucks, and Tommy has an explosive temper and a psychotic need to prove himself through violence. At one point, he humiliates an innocent and unarmed young waiter "Spider" (played by an unknown Michael Imperioli), asking Spider to dance à la The Oklahoma Kid then shooting him in the foot. Later, when Spider stands up to Tommy, Tommy suddenly draws his gun and shoots Spider in the chest, killing him instantly.
Henry also meets and falls in love with Karen (Lorraine Bracco), a no-nonsense young Jewish woman; they go to the Copacabana club two to three times a week (the film depicts this in a famous steadicam shot). Karen feels uneasy with her boyfriend's career, but is also "turned on" by it. Henry and Karen eventually marry.
In June 1970, Tommy (aided by Jimmy Conway) brutally murders Billy Batts (Frank Vincent), a made man in the competing Gambino crime family; a major offense that could get them all killed by the Gambinos if discovered. Henry, Conway and DeVito bury Batts' corpse in an abandoned field (a flash-forward of this scene opens the film). When they discover six months later that the land has been sold, they are forced to exhume, move, and rebury the badly decomposed body.
Henry's marriage deteriorates when Karen finds he has a mistress, Janice Rossi (played by the late Gina Mastrogiacomo). Karen confronts a sleeping Henry with a gun as he wakes up. As soon as she lowers the gun, Henry subdues her and screams that he has enough on his mind having to worry about being whacked on the street without waking up with a gun in the face.
After dangling a debt-ridden Florida gambler over a lion cage at the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa, Henry and Jimmy are caught and sent to prison for four years. There, Henry deals drugs to keep afloat and to support his family, and, when he returns to them, he has a lucrative drug connection in Pittsburgh. Cicero warns Henry against dealing drugs, since mob bosses can get hefty prison sentences if their men are running drugs behind their back.
Henry ignores Cicero and involves Tommy and Jimmy (as well as his wife, and new mistress (Debi Mazar) in an elaborate smuggling operation. About the same time, December 1978, Jimmy Conway and friends plan and carry out a record $6,000,000 heist from the Lufthansa cargo terminal at JFK airport (then Idlewild airport). Soon after the heist, Jimmy grows paranoid when some of his associates foolishly flaunt their gains in plain sight, possibly drawing police attention, and begins having them killed off. Worse, after promising to welcome Tommy into the Lucchese family as a "made man," the elder members of the family instead kill him as retaliation for Batts' death.
In an extended, virtuoso sequence titled "Sunday, May 11th, 1980," all of the different paths of Henry's complicated Mafia career collide. He must coordinate a major cocaine shipment; cook a meal for his family; placate his mistress, who processes the cocaine he sells; cope with his clueless babysitter/drug courier; avoid federal authorities who, unknown to him, have had him under surveillance for several months; and satisfy his sleazy customers, all the while a nervous wreck from lack of sleep and snorting too much coke. Henry and his courier are arrested by police as he backs out of his driveway. Karen bails her husband out of jail, after destroying all of the cocaine that was hidden in the house. Henry and his family are left penniless.
After Henry's drug arrest, Cicero and the rest of the mob abandon him. Convinced that he and his family are marked for death, Henry decides to become an informant for the FBI. He and his family enter the federal Witness Protection Program, disappearing into anonymity to save their lives, but not before he testifies against Paulie and Jimmy in court. He is now an "average nobody"; "I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook." The movie's quick final shot is of Tommy firing a pistol directly into the camera, a tribute to the final shot of The Great Train Robbery.
The film closes with a few title cards what became of Hill, Paul Cicero (Vario) and Jimmy Conway (Burke). Henry's marriage to Karen ended in separation with her getting custody of their children, and Cicero and Conway will practically spend the rest of their lives in prison. Cicero died in 1988. Conway's title card explains that he was eligible for parole in 2004, though he died in prison in 1996.
"As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a gangster." -- Henry Hill, Brooklyn, N.Y. 1955.
Gangsters are all around us. Everyone knows it, not everyone wants to accept it. "Goodfellas"--based on true events--explores the lives of gangsters, chronicling the events through the eyes of Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), who gets involved with the Mafia at a young age and continues his "career" throughout the film.
As he gets older, he marries and has children, but still works for the organized crime family, under mob boss Paulie (Paul Sorvino); and he is friends with Jimmy (Robert De Niro), a calm, steady gangster; and Tommy (Joe Pesci), a wild man with serious mental problems.
Eventually Henry's life goes down the gutter, leading to drug abuse and paranoia, that leads to other unfortunate incidents that will be ruined if I type any more about them.
"Goodfellas" is one of the best films I have ever seen. It's a tour de force of breathtaking images, witty scriptwriting, superb acting and realistic violence.
Robert De Niro gives one of his best performances -- ever -- as Jimmy, even if he's not in the film as much as you might be lead to believe from the front cover.
Joe Pesci is in this movie about as much as De Niro, maybe a bit more or less. But when he's on screen there's no doubting he's on screen--he's very hard to miss. A short, deranged, loud-mouthed man with something wrong in his head. Someone makes an insult toward him and he shoots them, and then laughs. It's quite disturbing. I am a huge fan of Pesci, and I tend to love his characters, but he really makes you feel sick towards his character in "Goodfellas," while at the same time taking a strange liking to him. That just goes to show how good of an actor Pesci is.
Ray Liotta is perfect as Henry Hill. I can't think of a better actor to play him. He captures a sense of innocence yet at the same time a feeling of violence. I love the scene where he walks over to a man's house with a regular expression on his face. "What do you want, f&*^&?" the man asks. Liotta continues walking, takes out a gun, and starts to continually beat the man in the skull with the butt of his gun. As Henry walks back to his car, his face is disturbing and his expression stays with you for a long, long time.
Martin Scorsese is a brilliant director and his work here is fabulous; it's been recreated by other directors (namely Paul Thomas Anderson in "Boogie Nights") and there's a reason: it's great stuff. He totally deserved to receive Best Director in 1990, but of course he didn't. (Rumor has it the Academy frowns on Scorsese's use of racial slurs in his work. Oh boo hoo, get over it.)
The movie is based on the true-crime memoirs of the real-life Henry Hill, whose novel with Nicholas Pileggi -- "Wiseguys" -- was adapted into a screenplay by Pileggi and Scorsese. The book itself was fantastic and insightful; the screenplay is even better. The dialogue is incredible.
By the way, I think it is appropriate to put a bit of a disclaimer on this review: I would not recommend "Goodfellas" to those that have a problem with violence and/or language, and "Goodfellas" is definitely not one for your kids to watch--it contains extremely strong, pervasive language, and a great deal of strong, realistic violence. I only put this because I am sick of parents taking children to see R-rated films that are not appropriate for children. And this is definitely one of them.
Anyway, "Goodfellas" has to be one of the best films I've ever seen--a true modern classic that will be remembered for what it is: One of the greatest tales told on screen. It's an offer you can't refuse!
My Rating
Goodfellas : 8.8/10
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