GOODFELLAS

“For a second I thought I was dead. But, when I heard all the noise, I knew they were cops. Only cops talk that way. If they'd been wiseguys, I wouldn't have heard a thing. I would've been dead.”

GOODFELLAS is the first disappointment I have experienced from the little project. It is a rich, loud, explosive film, but it is hollow. I was not expecting it to be as polar as it is, the first half being a grand, luscious look at the rise of a series of mobsters in New York City in the 1950s and 60s (Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, and Joe Pesci). Scorsese was obviously going for a dichotomy of sorts in the film, wanting one half to be the rise of a gangster and the other half his imminent fall. The way it plays out, though, is cartoonish and overlong.

GOODFELLAS is based on the real-life account of former gangster Henry Hill (Liotta), who says "As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a gangster." The film opens explosively, with a mob hit involving Henry, Jimmy Conway (De Niro) and Tommy DeVito (Pesci), and quickly transitions back to New York City in the mid-1950s. Henry grows up quickly and makes his way up the mafioso food chain, becoming almost brothers with Jimmy, Tommy, and Paul Cicero (Paul Sorvino), the Godfather.

There is no shortage of energy in GOODFELLAS at any point, but its beginning is at a level of buzzing movement rarely seen in film. Peter Travers described Scorsese’s GANGS OF NEW YORK as “more than perfect: stunningly alive”. This is how I would describe the ninety minutes or so of GOODFELLAS. It is Martin Scorsese’s show, and he flexes his directorial muscles with a flair that he had never done before and has never duplicated since, even in better films such as RAGING BULL and THE DEPARTED. His mixing of period music, bloody, graphic violence, and larger-than-life performances is thrillingly entertaining. The introduction of Henry’s wife Karen (Lorraine Bracco) and the effects of the dealings of mafia life give the film its most personal note. She relates her feelings through narration, and Scorsese balances the narration of Karen simultaneously with that of Henry’s masterfully, making his story even more involving and interesting.

It is when Henry starts his downward through drugs and adultery that the wheels start to fall off of GOODFELLAS. The interesting, sprawling, complex becomes overwhelmed with that of only Henry and Karen’s drug use. Perhaps it was Scorsese and Henry Hill’s (they co-wrote the screenplay) attempt to show the film’s audience the effects of drug use on the human psyche, and how even gangsters get messed up by them. I thought it brought a flatness to the film that it didn’t need it, and it was an unnecessary, overlong sequence of events that could have been used to show other aspects of the mob. In short, much of the verve and energy of the first half is gone in the second, as the story isn’t as widespread and consequently less interesting in the concluding hour.

B

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