Three men sit in a Cadillac. There is a persistent banging coming from the trunk that demands the attention of these men. They pull over and open the trunk to see a man writhing in panic. One of the three men whips out a butchers knife and stabs the man repeatedly without blinking an eye. The youngest of the three then slams the trunk shut so they can get back on the road. That is the beginning to the greatest movie ever made.
I saw “Goodfellas” when I was young and instantly knew the context. These were mobsters, the guy in the trunk obviously crossed them and he was about to be buried in some “discrete location” that I didn’t “need to know nutin’ about.” This was a movie all about gangsters, and little did I know, the guiding light that leads across the bridge from childhood to adulthood. Like the lead character Henry Hill realizing the exact moment he wanted to be a gangster, I also would never look back.
This is it, the granddaddy of them all. Forget “The Godfather”, “The Godfather Pt. 2”, “Scarface” or any kind of mob movie in film history. “Goodfellas” is the movie they all have to beat, and the one they never will. The ultimate Martin Scorsese movie, filled with rich music, boatloads of violence and plenty of meatballs (both the food and the fat Italian man), this is a darkly comic odyssey of the rise and fall of a crime family.
Ray Liotta plays Henry Hill, the man at the center of this tale, who as a young teen wants nothing more than to be a gangster. As he moves up the rank we meet a bevy of colorful and reckless characters played marvelously by legendary wise guys like Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro and Paul Sorvino.
As we go on his journey we are exposed to all the ins and outs of the mafia lifestyle: heists, beatings, pasta, money, burying a big mouth on the side of the road, all the way to his demise and exodus into the witness protection.
No stone is left unturned, and it’s a staggering, often hilarious ride indeed. However much fun a movie it is, there is a stark cautionary message looming in its loins about how crime never pays in the end, no matter how luxurious the ride may be. It’s a theme Marty would later touch on in a very similar fashion to great success in “The Wolf Wall Street.”
I will not continue any further because if you’ve seen the movie then you already know how stupendous this ride is, and if you haven’t, then you should stop reading and go watch it now. I’m serious. Go. Now. It’s 2015 and we have numerous ways to watch a movie. You have no excuse!
