Goodfellas
GOODFELLAS, Martin Scorsese's 1990 tale of New York gangsters in all their gory glory, is coming back to our cinema screens in a lovingly restored print later this month.
Some will tell you it is the director's greatest film. Even taking into account the other real beauties in his killer CV, I'd have to say I agree. I'd go a step further though and rank Goodfellas right up there with the greatest gangster films ever made.
A wild and dizzying trip into three decades of gangland gruesomeness, it's a masterclass in storytelling and a peerless example of how to neither glorify nor vilify the subject matter.
Scorsese simply lets the characters spin their tales and leaves the moral judgements on their actions for us to make.
In a career-best performance, Ray Liotta plays Henry Hill, a teenage hoodlum who hangs out with the New York mob until he's considered well enough connected to begin taking part in everyday mob hits, general racketeering and the occasional big money airline heist.
Before you know it he's knee deep in his fellow gangsters blood and up to his septum in the high grade cocaine he's pedalling on the side.
Henry Hill's story was a true life tale – Hill was a significant mob informant whose tale was told in Nicholas Pileggi's book Wiseguy – but the real show-stealer in Scorsese's adaptation is little Joe Pesci, who buzzes like a loose Catherine wheel at a kids' party as psychopathic killer Tommy, a man with a fuse so short he's liable to go off before a match is even lit.
It's odd to think that without this electric turn as tough guy Tommy, we'd probably just remember Pesci as the terminally tortured house breaker in Home Alone.
His partnership here with Robert De Niro's nervy Jimmy The Gent – whose "Never rat on your friends" line ultimately falls on deaf ears – is at the very heart of this hugely entertaining epic.
As a director, Scorsese dazzles with his every touch. His always moving camera swaggers and struts around rooms with a cocky confidence he has rarely come close to equalling since.
His seedy and all too believable identity parade of hitmen and hustlers, mob wives and lowlifes weave in and out of the action like beautifully choreographed dancers, his genius editor Thelma Schoonmaker clips the punchy, memorable dialogue so tightly it spits and sparkles throughout and the soundtrack stakes its claim as one of the greatest ever with its free flowing mix of red-hot doo wop, raucous r&b and vintage 60s rock.
The tracks,all chosen by Scorsese himself, help the film bridge the film's often episodic nature and three decade timeline effortlessly. The tracks embellish the action so effectively a single viewing will leave you unable to hear the piano edit of Layla without visualising a particularly grim in-car garotting sequence or even think of Donovan's hippy anthem Atlantis without the image of Tommy and Jimmy dishing out a hideous kicking jumping into your mind.
Rarely has music jump-started the cinema with quite the kinetic power as it does here. Scorsese had tapped into that special power to capture an era that pop music has before of course – think of Mean Streets, his low budget lowlife offering from 1973, that feels in many ways like a dry run for Goodfellas – but never has it been as bang-on the money as it is here.
See it on the big screen while you've got the chance.
