Day 37: Goodfellas (1990)

Movie #16 – Goodfellas (1990) - 146 min, cert 18.

Goodfellas is a personal account of a life spent within the New York mafia. It is narrated by Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) and we follow his experiences from his humble beginnings as a teenage underling, through his glory years as a major gangster, a spell in prison, to his decline as a paranoid drug dealer, and finally his exile into the witness relocation program. This is essentially a biopic. It doesn’t focus on any particular job or incident, but simply tells the story of one, very real man’s life.

This is certainly a great movie. Scorsese perfectly captures the feeling of being inside this elite club where everyone knows your name, and treats you like royalty. But, at the same time, the undercurrent of violence is always there, so we can see the price being paid for this treatment, and as the film develops, we see where it leads. Scorsese always keeps his camera moving, which gives the effect that we are a part of the scene, and therefore a part of the mafia family itself.

There are great performances from the lead characters. Ray Liotta does a fine job as Henry Hill, although I think his portrayal improves as the film goes on. Robert De Niro plays Hill’s long-time associate, Jimmy Conway, the sort of role he seems born to play, and Joe Pesci is wonderful as Tommy DeVito, another long-time associate, with a proclivity for extreme violence.

It’s an excellent movie, thoroughly deserving such a high position in the list. I can’t think of any reason to downgrade it, so I’ll have to give it 10/10 and insert it at number 5 in my list.

1.       The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

2.       Pulp Fiction (1994)

3.       Fight Club (1999)

4.       The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

5.       Goodfellas (1990)

6.       Schindler’s List (1993)

7.       Inception (2010)

8.      Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977)

9.       The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

10.   12 Angry Men (1957)

Next up is Casablanca. I’ve never seen this movie, and it’s for films like this that I wanted to do this challenge in the first place. To give me the impetus to watch those classic films that I feel I really ought to have seen but have never got round to watching.