Martin Scorcese’s masterpiece that picked up where The Godfather trilogy left off, and in many ways was the third part in the Trilogy, is an earth-stopping tour-de-force of organized crime, riding till death, burning out rather than fading away. It is the film that made Ray Liotta into the go-to guy for burned-out, hard-edged, paranoid no-collar guy who would laugh at the idea of a “real job”. But he puts in work. Goodfellas gave to the world a privileged and well-distanced peek into the life where “as far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster”, because who in their right mind would ever want to work for money, surely it’s better to just take it, right? This was the dawn of the 90’s, the end of the 80’s, cocaine had started to lose its shine and money was suddenly in the down swing of boom-bust. Scorcese gave us a visual poem that explained this mindset perfectly, from the films dawning in the mid fifties, to its climax in the late 80’s and release in 1990, we all wanted walk maybe not a mile, but at least a couple of blocks in the shoes of Henry Hill, of Tommy (Joe Pesci), of Jimmy (Robert De Niro). But one does not sleepwalk through a film like this. In one of the most iconic scenes, when Hill (Liotta) is released from prison and warned by Paulie (Paul Sorvino) to stay away from drugs, the slap in the face was completely improvised, unknown to Liotta. His reaction was real, our reaction was timeless, and so Goodfellas, Liotta, and casual violence to push home a point, all make it to our list of unsung heroes of modern cinema.
