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What is it about the gangster that fascinates us so much? Whether they be fictional or real, there's just something about gangsters, and the unencumbered power fantasies they embody that hold an undying fascination for us, despite (or maybe a bit because of?) the moral failings inherent to their lifestyles. It's something that filmmakers have tried to capture time and time again in movies through the years, but for my money, no other film did it better than Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, as the cinematic icon took a lifelong fascination with these denizens of the underworld, and filtered it through the perspective of a man who not only shared that fascination, but actually made it a reality for himself, resulting in what is, despite his tremendous body of work, ultimately Marty's very finest hour as a director, and a complete and total cinematic jolt to the system, just as fresh and invigorating today as it was in thirty-plus years ago.

It tells the true story of Henry Hill, a working class kid from Manhattan who grows up idolizing the Lucchese mobsters who run the cabstand across the street, with Henry joining and working his way up their ranks from an early age, starting with petty tasks like parking cars, before "graduating" to real crimes such as torching rival businesses, before finally becoming a full-fledged gangster once he's come of age. From there, it's a whirlwind of white powders, fast living, and easy murder for Hill, one that ultimately threatens to consume him entirely, with the young wiseguy not knowing if the end will come with him rotting in a jail cell courtesy of the law, or meeting an early death in a shallow grave out in the middle of nowhere due to his gangster "friends", whether it be to keep him from ratting them out, or just him saying the right wrong word needed to fire their hair trigger tempers.

It's a lot to take in, but fellas never, ever bogs down or feels bloated, despite it's over two hour running time, as Scorsese takes the source material of Nicholas Pileggi's true crime book Wiseguy, and absolutely RUNS with it, right from the jarring, in media res murder scene that opens the film, and never so much as takes a glance back from there. Well, it actually does glance back as it goes to Henry's childhood, but it doesn't hit the brakes at all in doing so, as the film lays out the first quarter century of Hill's (criminal) life in quick vigenettes that are all the more impactful for their brevity, before it takes a bit more time to develop the more eventful incidents, such as the infamous Billy Bats beatdown, before finally documenting Hill's ultimate downfall from a wiseguy to a common "schnook", hiding out in Witness Protection, and having to settle for egg noodles and ketchup for a meal.

On the whole, it has the pacing of cokehead at the height of a week-long bender (which is very appropriate, considering the main figure here), aided greatly by Thelma Schoonmaker's frantic rapid-fire editing, which is so prominent, she should really get billing alongside Liotta, De Niro, and Pesci as one of the film's stars. However, that's not the only weapon in Goodfellas' sizeable arsenal of cinematic techniques, as Marty and company add a veritable jukebox worth of period hits for its soundtrack, and the absolutely kinectic cinematography makes copious use of close-ups, jittery zoom-ins, sudden freeze frames, elaborate tracking shots (the Copacabana, anyone?), as Scorsese's signature dramatic slow motion serving to further hammer home the moments that defined Hill even harder to us as an audience.

Finally, Goodfellas excels by bringing us as deep as possible within Henry's life, with the voiceover narration from both his and his wife Karen's individual perspectives laying out the seductive allure of it, as well the inner workings and rules that govern that particular (under)world, to the point that you almost feel like a gangster yourself just by watching them live their daily lives. In this way, we get as cozy as possible with the wiseguys, amidst all their profane banter, macho posturing, and violent outbursts, to the point that we're almost as disappointed as Hill is when he comes to his ultimate fate in surburban hell, looking back on his lifetime of crimetime with a wistful smile on his face, the same kind that's hopefully on your face as well, at the sight of such a great movie coming to an end; like Sid Vicious "sang", he did it his way...

What is it about the gangster that fascinates us so much? Whether they be fictional or real, there's just something about gangsters, and the unencumbered power fantasies they embody that hold an undying fascination for us, despite (or maybe a bit because of?) the moral failings inherent to their lifestyles. It's something that filmmakers have tried to capture time and time again in movies through the years, but for my money, no other film did it better than Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, as the cinematic icon took a lifelong fascination with these denizens of the underworld, and filtered it through the perspective of a man who not only shared that fascination, but actually made it a reality for himself, resulting in what is, despite his tremendous body of work, ultimately Marty's very finest hour as a director, and a complete and total cinematic jolt to the system, just as fresh and invigorating today as it was in thirty-plus years ago.

It tells the true story of Henry Hill, a working class kid from Manhattan who grows up idolizing the Lucchese mobsters who run the cabstand across the street, with Henry joining and working his way up their ranks from an early age, starting with petty tasks like parking cars, before "graduating" to real crimes such as torching rival businesses, before finally becoming a full-fledged gangster once he's come of age. From there, it's a whirlwind of white powders, fast living, and easy murder for Hill, one that ultimately threatens to consume him entirely, with the young wiseguy not knowing if the end will come with him rotting in a jail cell courtesy of the law, or meeting an early death in a shallow grave out in the middle of nowhere due to his gangster "friends", whether it be to keep him from ratting them out, or just him saying the right wrong word needed to fire their hair trigger tempers.

It's a lot to take in, but fellas never, ever bogs down or feels bloated, despite it's over two hour running time, as Scorsese takes the source material of Nicholas Pileggi's true crime book Wiseguy, and absolutely RUNS with it, right from the jarring, in media res murder scene that opens the film, and never so much as takes a glance back from there. Well, it actually does glance back as it goes to Henry's childhood, but it doesn't hit the brakes at all in doing so, as the film lays out the first quarter century of Hill's (criminal) life in quick vigenettes that are all the more impactful for their brevity, before it takes a bit more time to develop the more eventful incidents, such as the infamous Billy Bats beatdown, before finally documenting Hill's ultimate downfall from a wiseguy to a common "schnook", hiding out in Witness Protection, and having to settle for egg noodles and ketchup for a meal.

On the whole, it has the pacing of cokehead at the height of a week-long bender (which is very appropriate, considering the main figure here), aided greatly by Thelma Schoonmaker's frantic rapid-fire editing, which is so prominent, she should really get billing alongside Liotta, De Niro, and Pesci as one of the film's stars. However, that's not the only weapon in Goodfellas' sizeable arsenal of cinematic techniques, as Marty and company add a veritable jukebox worth of period hits for its soundtrack, and the absolutely kinectic cinematography makes copious use of close-ups, jittery zoom-ins, sudden freeze frames, elaborate tracking shots (the Copacabana, anyone?), as Scorsese's signature dramatic slow motion serving to further hammer home the moments that defined Hill even harder to us as an audience.

Finally, Goodfellas excels by bringing us as deep as possible within Henry's life, with the voiceover narration from both his and his wife Karen's individual perspectives laying out the seductive allure of it, as well the inner workings and rules that govern that particular (under)world, to the point that you almost feel like a gangster yourself just by watching them live their daily lives. In this way, we get as cozy as possible with the wiseguys, amidst all their profane banter, macho posturing, and violent outbursts, to the point that we're almost as disappointed as Hill is when he comes to his ultimate fate in surburban hell, looking back on his lifetime of crimetime with a wistful smile on his face, the same kind that's hopefully on your face as well, at the sight of such a great movie coming to an end; like Sid Vicious "sang", he did it his way...