'Goodfellas' is considered by many as the next best Mafia movie after 'The Godfather', if not the best. Released in 1990, it was directed by Martin Scorsese. 'Goodfellas' is based on 'Wise Guy', a non-fiction book by Nicholas Pileggi who co-wrote the film's screenplay with Scorsese. The film covers a span of three decades, following the stories of three gangsters played by Robert de Niro, Ray Liotta, and Joe Pesci.
The movie is presented in the eyes of its main character and narrator, Henry Hill, who is played by Liotta. The movie starts with Henry saying "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster." The rest of the movie unfolds showing how Henry lived his early life in fulfillment of this dream, only to fall in the end and find himself uttering "I'm an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook."
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Figure 1. In this scene, hot-tempered Tommy is asking a very nervous Henry why the latter just called him 'a funny guy'. This scene was spoofed by ToyHollywood.com in this video. |
The film spans three decades - from 1955 when Henry was a teen-ager. Taken in as an errand boy by the Lucchese crime family, he slowly rose in rank as an accomplished gangster. By the time he is 21, he is so well-connected that he easily impresses his girlfriend Karen (whom he later marries) during dates, whom he later marries.
Henry establishes solid friendship with two other mobsters in the movie - Jimmy Conway (played by Robert de Niro) and Tommy deVito (played by Joe Pesci). Jimmy is into organized truck hijacking while Tommy is a psycho nut that easily loses his temper. Many of the interesting scenes in the movie are provided by the hot-temperedness of Tommy.
The trio has had a string of successes in their chosen fields until Tommy killed Billy Batts, a made man in the Gambino family. Within the Mafia, such an act without approval from superiors deserves a death penalty. Thus, Tommy was killed by Gambino mobsters, something that Jimmy and Henry can not do anything about.
Henry prospered by going into the lucrative drug business, but in the end was also arrested by anti-narc agents. He and his wife then decided to be in the Witness Protection Program, sealing his fate to just live as a 'nobody' for the rest of his life.
Goodfellas was produced with a budget of only $25M, but grossed $46.8M in the U.S. The movie was nominated for 6 Academy Awards, including one where Joe Pesci won his "Best Supporting Actor" award. Goodfellas also received very good reviews from movie critics.
Information on the movie's full credits may be found at:
