They Call Themselves: Goodfellas (1990)

After watching “Goodfellas” I realize, Martin Scorsese might be my new favourite director. I might not have liked “Cape Fear” and “Taxi Driver” all that much, but I realize after watching and reflecting on the two movies, they are better than I initially thought. And now I have been really wanting to see Goodfellas for a long while, especially for the infamous “You think I’m funny?” scene. But find out what I thought about the rest of the movie.


The story starts off with a very young Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), an Irish/Italian kid being raised up in the mean streets. He starts to skip school to work for the local mafia members. As he makes his presence known Paul Cicero starts to bring him up in the rankings to a point where he meets James Conway, a powerful gangster. This is where James and Henry start to do robberies, and that’s where Henry meets his best friend Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci), a wild man. Watch as these three guys gain momentum and make an impact in the mafia community, then watch their downfall.

Tony, Henry and James look over their new found loot.

As solid as the story is, what really blew me out of the water are the characters. They were well created and the amazing part was how critical one of them was to the other two. Henry is the more sensible one, trying to be the cool head of the crew. Then we have the loose camber of Tony. He says what he wants and does what he damn will do. He isn’t shy with his words nor his fist, this makes him by far the most entertaining to watch. And even trios have leaders and that is James Conway. He flaunts his money and his gun around, he is powerful and we all know it. He may look calm and collected on the top, but when the pressure is on he’ll become explosive and paranoid. The three deliver a good dynamic to the film.

I also found how the film was delivered interesting. Most of this is narrated by Henry, his views and his ideas. But when he meets his future wife, she starts to take some of the narrating role. The dual perspective of an innocent wife and her criminal husband gives the film a neat overlay. Even as Henry starts to freak out in the movie, you can hear it in his voice while he is narrating that shit is hitting the fan.

Henry does a great job of keeping his wife in the dark.

Whenever anyone ever talks about Joe Pesci, I always link him to Home Alone and Home Alone 2. Only because it is the first movie I’ve seen him in and I’ve seen that movie way too many times. But gladly this movie changed that. His performance during the scene where he goes ape-shit crazy (“You think I’m funny”) on Henry is fantastic. He goes from laughing, to manically crazy to being jolly again. I went from “Oh shi” to laughing my ass off at the end. Just an amazing scene.

To sum it all up, I loved this movie. It’s the combination of an amazing story and highly entertaining characters that make this an entertaining movie. I was not once bored and it doesn’t seem to have any low points in this movie. In terms of gangster movies, it is by far my favourite. Yes, even better than “Scarface”.