Goodfellas (1990)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Goodfellas (1990) – M. Scorsese

Scorsese pulls out all the stops to dazzle viewers with his cinematic prowess (aided immensely by editor Thelma Schoonmaker and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus).  Tracking shots are everywhere, for example, following Henry (Ray Liotta) and Karen Hill (Lorraine Bracco) as they move through a restaurant or club, meeting wiseguys as they pass.  But it’s the period music, from fifties pop hits to seventies classic rock, that punctuates each scene which really lifts the film.  You know the story:  Hill is a local boy who grows up to be part of the mob, but always on the outside because he is only half Italian.  He falls in with another outsider, Irish Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) and hot-head Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci), and they raise their status in the gang by robbing the airport for big money.  The script from Nicholas Pileggi’s book is based on a true story and we are lead through it (and the decades) via Liotta’s voiceover.  Paul Sorvino plays the local boss.  All of the characters are morally corrupt and dubious -- with stealing, killing, and treating women poorly staples of their repertoire – yet somehow Scorsese has us on their side, as he tells the story from their viewpoint (though he doesn’t seem to implicate us as Hitchcock would).  Even as Hill becomes addicted to the coke he starts dealing (and the voiceover seems to speed up and become paranoid), we are on his side hoping that things don’t come crashing down around him (but of course they do).  Throughout the film Jimmy and Tommy represent a rawer unpredictable force and the violence associated with their actions breaks up the otherwise groovy atmosphere that Scorsese creates.  Perhaps the film contains one subplot or scene too many and Liotta’s acting feels one rung down from that of the others, but these are minor quibbles in an otherwise superb piece of cinema.