Goodfellas

I like a good mob movie and Goodfellas is the best. The thing I love about Goodfellas and one of the main reasons so many people like Martin Scorsese’s work is because it is a viewing experience that you can get no where else. He gets the best, funniest Italians in the business and he tells them to act like badass Italian mobsters who take care of the family and have a great time doing business beating people up. They love that kind of work and you can tell that the actors emulate their “hero” or ideal self and really get into their parts. They get to swagger and strut around and generally harass everyone else. Goodfellas is a fun movie that depicts a life that I cannot imagine, but I have a feeling I would have a really good time being an Italian gangster. It holds the viewer because it shows all of the power, money, violence and extravagance that we all secretly wish we could indulge in. The movie shows us how the little guy can climb his way to the top and make all his dreams happen. It also shows us the reality of organized crime and how while that life would provide a plethora of worldly pleasures, it is fundamentally wrong and destroys a person over time. We watch because we want to be those guys on the screen, on some level we all want to be Goodfellas. Scorsese nails down another classic and changes the way we see the mob but beyond that the moral is universal and changes the way we see the world. It is a powerful movie that makes you wonder if that is what you’d get off to doing. Like Henry Hill said, "As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a gangster."