I got this film on a spree at Relics three years ago, and looking at the list of films I got, I’m pleased to say that I’ve watched maybe half of the 29 I bought. Which is pretty good for me, but the number of yet-to-watch films atop the cabinets has grown quite a lot despite those efforts.
So: The film’s protagonist, as it were, is Henry Hill, played by Ray Liotta, a half-Irish kid growing up in the middle fifties in sight of the local mob guy’s restaurant. He starts running errands for him, growing into a hijacker role along with full-Italian Tommy DeVito (not the quarterback) played by Joe Pesci and Jimmy played by Robert DeNiro. The first third tells about how they come up, the second kind of about a big heist they do and its aftermath, and then the final third is Hill going up for something and getting into the drug trade behind bars–and the final climax is a day where it all falls apart for him. Deep in the drug trade–against the wishes of Paulie, the neighborhood mob boss–he is hoping for a big score but the cops bust him, and he turns on and testifies against his former colleagues.
When I bought the film, Friar commented:
Goodfellas is like the anti-Godfather. No romanticized wiseguys, just crooks.
And I kind of agree with it. It looked like Hill might be the conscience of the group, maybe balking at how violent the groups became coming into the 1970s, at odds with his romanticization of them from his youth, but…. Nah. The film starts in media res, with the trio driving and hearing something in the back of the car–the dead body in the trunk wasn’t dead, and Jimmy and Tommy dispatch it further–and the first part is flashback leading up to that moment, and when the film catches up with it, I expected…. I dunno, something other than same old, same old with the latter dipping into the drug trade and then a rather abrupt jump into the passage of time to the final act where Hill has been too much into his own product and is strung out and under heavy suspicion. And then he testifies, and then he’s a schnook like the rest of us. So, ultimately, he is not the conscience of the film.
The film is based on an autobiography or memoir named Wiseguy by a former gangster. The film, of course, could not bear that title because the Ken Wahl television series claimed that title in the middle 1980s–perhaps also inspiried by the book, but more likely the free-flowing mob fascination of the era.
The film has punched above its weight, though, remaining timely at least through the two memes that one sees on the Internet even today. Tommy Gets Whacked and the over-the-top laughing image (although one still hears “Funny? Like a clown?” from the same scene from time-to-time). So people recognize images of it without, perhaps, understanding the context of the images, even now. Like so much of an Internetified education.
It took me two nights to watch the film for the oddest of reasons. Halfway through the movie, the screen went blue, and as my beautiful wife was home from her whatever that night, I didn’t look into it further, but apparently, for some reason, they put half of the movie on the back side of the DVD, so I had to flip it like a flippin’ laser disc. I dunno, maybe this is how media companies mark a serious mob movie–I have a set of The Godfather films which are on two VHS cassettes (because they’re recorded on the slow setting for better fidelity) which I watched almost five years ago and I think I have a two-VHS version of Casino around here somewhere, tentatively scheduled for viewing in 2031 because I go five years between mob movies apparently. But I’ve not seen that on DVDs before.
So: Well, one more down, which leaves only 8 of the 28 films I bought that day atop the cabinet (amidst dozens of others I have bought since then). Which I count as progress. But next month has two book sales, so….
