Goodfellas (1990) Movie Review

Director: Martin Scorsese
Writers: Nicholas Pileggi, Martin Scorsese
Starring: Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci

In this review, I often use Ocean's Eleven as a reference point. This is because both films are about criminals and stealing. Also, Ocean's Eleven is fantastic.

This is a difficult one. Not because this film is rich and dense with outstanding filmmaking (which it is), but because it is a behemoth of cinematic history. I have never heard a single word against this film. It makes disliking this film like calling Mother Teresa a slag or Ghandi a weakling who needs to put some meat on his damn bones. Even just writing that sounds outlandish. But alas, when watching Scorsese’s most well regarded film, I found it difficult to enjoy myself.

Goodfellas tells the ‘true’ story of a gangster and his two gangster friends and their escapades in the gangster world. Ray Liotta is the chief protagonist who finds it increasingly irresistible to shove cocaine up his nose. Joe Pesci is a trigger-happy imp with a short fuse and Robert De Niro is a gangster god who can do no wrong.  The plot itself is incredibly difficult to explain.

The part of the film that I did quite enjoy was the opening twenty minutes. This long sequence recounts the early days of Liotta’s gangster career. It whisks along at a pace so breath-taking that it warrants the verb ‘whisk’. It highlights the odd ambitions of his character as he endures beltings from his father just so he can keep doing his gangster deeds. The use of Liotta’s narration during this scene in particular is excellent. It naturally makes the scene feel more like a montage than a first act. This narration loses its effect later on in the film when the pace (and my interest) drops to that of a quadriplegic cow.

My issue with this film is that is so messy. That is not to say that it is not a well made film, merely a poorly written one. Tight films have a goal set out at the beginning that the protagonists strive to achieve. I am going to use Ocean’s Eleven as a reference point. In Ocean’s Eleven, the goal is clearly set to both the characters and audience in the first act; they want to break into Terry Benedict’s vault and steal his money. That goal is easy to understand and more pertinently it is easy to tell when it has been achieved. In Goodfellas on the other hand, the closest thing to a goal that is set in the first act is that Liotta wants to be a gangster. It may just be a flippant line that sounds good to open the film but I immediately take that as his motivation for the first act. That is fine… until he appears to have done it. As soon as teenage Liotta evolves into adult Liotta, it seems that he is in fact a gangster. This brings about even more issues with the motivation. It is placed in a pit of ambiguity in the viewers mind as they decide both whether he has or hasn’t done made it as a gangster and what his motivation is now. I hope that it is clear that this contributes to the messy nature of the film.

Later on in the film, another issue arises. This somewhat links into the last point in that the film has no climax that it is building to (when the climax is actually happening, it is obvious but there was no mention of the possibility of a climax like moment coming up). In Ocean’s Eleven, it is clear from the beginning what the climax of the film is going to be. It is the heist, or more specifically when the team breaks into the vault. This is evident from the beginning because it is explained to the team and its significance is emphasised. In Goodfellas, when the climax was happening, I felt no significance in the scene. I had seen him trafficking drugs before. The only thing that makes this scene feel more intense is the admittedly excellent editing and frantic narration from Liotta. This lack of significance undermined what could have been an incredibly tense climax.

OK, I know, it seems a little ridiculous with how many issues I found with this film but… here’s another. This film has about seventeen separate stories. There’s the one where Joe Pesci kills a man with his hand, there’s the one where Joe Pesci kills a man with his gun, there’s the one where they’re in prison, there’s the one where they rob the airport and you don’t see it happen and there’s the one where Ray Liotta is cheating on his wife with no repercussions. I might be forgetting some… and that is the problem. This issue relates back to my point about this film being messy. Most films have varying levels of tension throughout. Vaguely, the tension begins low and rises towards the climax after which it lowers again for the resolution. In Goodfellas, the tension almost always feels incredibly high. While this may seem like a good thing on paper, you may say, ‘this is incredible, every scene is really tense and I never know what is going to happen,’ it does not work particularly well in practice. The result of having such consistently high tension is that every subsequent scene feels less tense. The reason high tension usually has such an effect on the viewer is that it puts you in an uncomfortable situation. It is impossible to achieve this uncomfortable situation when every scene has the same level of tension. This makes every scene comfortable and no scene tense.

This being said, do not get the impression that I don’t appreciate the impressive filmmaking on display throughout the film. The long take of Liotta walking through the innards of the Copacabana club is logistically terrifying and cinematically brilliant. It displays the lavish life that Liotta has leapt into marvellously as he walks through kitchen to the club itself, tossing money at anybody with hands. There’s a reason why the scene has gone down in cinematic history and it was a truly impressive part of the film.

I cannot bring myself to like Goodfellas. I can appreciate the filmmaking all-day long but it makes no difference to the issues I have with the writing and the film at large. While there are incredibly well made moments in the film, these moments together form a disappointingly incoherent whole.