GoodFellas opens with three guys, Jimmy, Tommy and Henry in a
car on the highway. It looks like just an ordinary nighttime drive, with the two
passengers having fallen asleep--until they hear a strange knocking sound. At
first they're not sure what it could be, but then they all share an expression
of dread as they decide to pull over and check. As soon as Henry, who was
driving, parks the car in a quiet, desolate area, they open the trunk and their
suspicions are confirmed. Billy Batts, a made member of the Gambino crime family
who is stuffed in the truck, is still very much alive, despite the vicious
beating that Tommy and Jimmy both gave him a few hours ago. Cursing like a sailor,
Tommy decides to silence Billy once and for all by brutally stabbing him several
times in the heart. Henry, much like the viewer of this film, watches this
stark scene in morbid fascination.
With GoodFellas, director Martin Scorsese tells the true story of Henry Hill
(Ray Liotta, who shines in a star-making role), a man who first became involved
with the mob by running errands for them as a boy. While still a teenager, he
soon meets a rising star in the mob world named Jimmy Conway (Robert DeNiro,
giving another of his meticulous performances), who takes Henry under his wing
after the boy coolly weathered his first arrest without squealing on anybody.
Before long, Henry is pulling heists and getting in tight with his mob comrades,
including Tommy (marvelously played by Joe Pesci), a thug with a hair-trigger
temper who would literally shoot you as soon as look at you. Henry does so well
for himself that when he meets Karen, a woman who would soon be his wife, he
dazzles her with a night at the Copacabana, where the staff and fellow customers
treat him like a star. Henry's career in the mob cultivates with the infamous
Lufthansa heist, where the thieves, led by Jimmy Conway, netted six million
dollars, making it the biggest such haul in history. Yet the aftermath of this
heist also foreshadows the beginning of the end, as Conway gets paranoid and
starts whacking everybody around him, and Henry and Karen sink deeper into their
illegal drug deals--a little side business that has not been condoned by their
mafia bosses.
Stylishly told, GoodFellas is an absorbing look into organized crime, warts and
all. Narrated in turn by Liotta and Loraine Bracco as their characters Henry and
Karen Hill, GoodFellas manages to dig even deeper into the nuances of this
fascinating and very dangerous lifestyle than most mob movies do. And the
amazing thing about it was, as bizarre of some of these situations may appear,
this was all based on a true story. DeNiro gives another great performance as
Jimmy, who will never truly be accepted within the mob because of his Irish
roots. Ray Liotta effectively shows the result of a what lifetime of being in
the mob can do to a man; at first a jubilant member who sees the mafia as a way
of becoming a somebody, by the end of the film, Liotta's Henry is a burned out
shell of a man who is so paranoid he sees threats everywhere. And Joe Pesci's
Tommy is simply a brilliant character who is mesmerizing in a funny/scary way:
one minute you're laughing at his antics, and the next second you're repulsed
by this stone-cold killer as he casually guns somebody down as easily as he
would light a cigarette. Lorraine Bracco is also superb as Karen, a woman who at
first tries hard not to be the typical mob wife, yet eventually becomes
embroiled in the criminal end of it anyway.
There are two separate commentaries, including one featuring the cast and crew
of the film (Scorsese, DeNiro, Liotta, Bracco and several more of the crew) and
the other featuring the real Henry Hill and former FBI agent Edward McDonald.
On the second disc, there are three documentaries devoted to GoodFellas:
"Getting Made" details the making of the film, while "Made Men: The GoodFellas
Legacy" has other filmmakers Joe Carnahan, Jon Favreau, Antoine Fuqua, The
Hughes Brothers, and Richard Linklater comment on the influence GoodFellas had
on them and in films in general. "The Workaday Gangster" offers a look inside
the less glamorous of mob life. And there is also a storyboard to screen
comparison, and the theatrical trailer. This two-disc DVD offers the definitive
presentation of the definitive mob movie. --SF
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