Goodfellas (1990)
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Goodfellas Movie Review
Goodfellas is a 1990 crime film directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Ray Liotta among many others. It’s one of the director’s worst movies.
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“As far back as I can remember
I always wanted to be a gangster“
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Henry grows up idolizing mobsters in his impoverished neighborhood. Things take a turn for the worse when he along with his friends Jimmy and Tommy decide to make their way up the mob hierarchy. Scorsese has obviously always fixated on two subjects during his career – mobsters and religion. This is his most famous mob movie, one that continues to be endlessly praised. However, I find it to be his worst effort – a film where he showed all of his worst instincts.
The status of this movie as some kind of a cinematic masterpiece infuriates me. I always strive to pinpoint hypocrisies when I see them and the treatment of this movie is the most hypocritical of them all. Many would complain today about the racism of ‘Gone with the Wind’ or so many other classics from many decades ago, but so few would actually go on to pinpoint everything that is morally objectionable about this frustrating movie.
My main gripe with Goodfellas is its glorified depiction of the gangster lifestyle. I found the central narration to be absolutely horrendous and one of the most annoying narrations in the history of cinema. The accent, the delivery and everything about it annoyed me to no end. Through this narration, the movie posits that this lifestyle is very cool, at least initially. Most of the movie, the beginning in particular, depicts their lifestyle in such a romanticized and glorified manner that made it very uncomfortable to watch.
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Not only that, but the movie is told from the point of view of these criminals with whom I cannot sympathize in the slightest. Why would I love a movie that is about everything that I detest about humanity? There is not a single relatable, moving or sophisticated moment in this movie that is all about how mobsters are cool.
Of the cast, Joe Pesci was the highlight for me. He deserved his Oscar for playing the funniest character in the movie. That famous scene of his about him being funny was very memorable. Lorraine Bracco is also quite good, but in a very thankless role. All actors delivered strong work here, but their characters were very unlikable obviously, so I did not care about their arcs in the slightest.
Obviously, Goodfellas is technically strong. This is the only area of the movie that I genuinely appreciated. The editing by the famed Thelma Schoonmaker is top-notch, the cinematography is fantastic and the soundtrack is a banger. The movie incorporated so many hit songs from the 50s and 60s that I really enjoy, so I’ve had a blast listening to them. It’s just a shame that all of this technical mastery was spent on a terrible script, frustrating dialogue and a morally objectionable approach to storytelling.
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So many people today would complain about the objectionable content of classic movies, whether it be sexism, racism or anything else. That is why I have to pinpoint the hypocrisy in the treatment of Goodfellas as this supposed masterpiece that it surely is not. This is one of the worst movies that Scorsese directed, a film where he put all of his worst instincts as a filmmaker in one annoying package. The movie is not just thoroughly unrelatable in its unlikable, horrible characters, but it’s also highly morally objectionable in its glorified and romanticized depiction of mobsters and their lifestyle. The technical aspects are superb – the editing is top-notch, the acting is strong, the movie is so well shot and its soundtrack is a banger. It’s a shame, then, that this technical mastery was spent on such a terrible, problematic story.
My Rating – 2.5
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