Cinema Sunday: GoodFellas

In 1993, I was an alleged grown up man person who had turned 30 years old and I spent a part of my time as an alleged grown up man person watching Animaniacs. In addition to Yakko, Wakko and Dot, the series featured recurring features like Pinky & the Brain, Slappy & Skippy Squirrel, Buttons and Mindy and many others including the GoodFeathers.

The GoodFeathers are an Italian American trio of pigeons patterned after the roles played by Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, and Joe Pesci in Goodfellas.

For nearly 3 decades, GoodFeathers was as close as I, an alleged grown up man person, got watching Martin Scorsese's epic crime film.  

Not for lack of trying mind you. 

I've started GoodFellas more times than I can count. Liotta, De Niro and Pesci are the riding in a car in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. There's someone making noises in the trunk of the car. That someone is going to die. And Ray Liotta's narration tells us, "All my life, I wanted to be a gangster." 

Then some shit would get in the way and I never finished the damn thing. 

A couple of months ago, the narrator in my head said "All my life, I've wanted to see this damn gangster movie".  OK, not ALL my life but a long time at any rate and damn, I was going to watch GoodFellas. 

I mean, I had to turn it into a 3 part mini-series but I got the job done.  

Released in 1990, GoodFellas chronicles the life and career of Henry Hill (Liotta) who as a kid was enamored with the Mafia life in his Italian-American neighborhood in Brooklyn. As a kid, Henry begins working for the mob in 1955, running errands and doing odd jobs for the mafia, local mob boss Paulie Cicero (Paul Sorvino) and his associates, Jimmy "the Gent" Conway (De Niro), an Irish-American truck hijacker and gangster, and Tommy DeVito (Pesci), a hot head with a hair trigger temper.  

Tommy is a guy who easily takes offense at any slight, real or perceived. And he quickly goes for the kill in response to any slight.

Tommy's the reason there's a guy in the trunk at the start of the movie. That will come back to haunt him.  

But dealing with a hot head like Tommy is a just a small price to pay to be a part of the mob.   

Compared to the beige tones of life in working class Brooklyn, hanging out with the mob is an intoxicating tonic for young Henry. And the guys in the mob are a more welcoming family than the abusive dick of a father back home. His found family in the Mafia shows him support and confidence and yes, even love. It is a family that has your back. 

Granted it is a family that has your back in the sights of a .38 revolver if you fuck up.  But Henry doesn't worry too much about that. The mob does right by him and he strives to do right by them.

Yes, all of that will take a turn for the worse.  

As an adult, Henry Hill movies up in the ranks of the rackets with grand larceny, fencing stolen goods and drug running. 

OK, that last item might be a problem. Paulie Cicero never signed off on Henry's cocaine smuggling operation. 

Yes, that will become a problem later.  

Henry marries Karen Friedman, a Jewish woman initially troubled by Henry's criminal activities but she can't help be seduced by Henry's glamorous gangster lifestyle. 

Henry's doing well enough for the mob he can afford a wife and a mistress. 

Henry is spreading himself a bit too thin. 

By 1980, Henry has been sampling his own cocaine, turning him into a paranoid wreck. He gets busted by narcotics agents. Paulie Cicero, pissed that Henry was running a cocaine operation behind his back, disowns him from the family.  And both Henry and Karen are suspicious that Jimmy "the Gent" Conway is under orders from Paulie to kill them. 

So it's off to the Feds to save their skins. 

Henry's testimony and evidence sends Paulie and Jimmy to prison. 

And going into Witness Protection, Henry and Karen are "rewarded" with a safe and secure life in a normal everyday suburban neighborhood.

Henry does not see this as a happy ending, his exciting gangster life now behind and now forced to live out his days as a boring, average "schnook".   

Henry Hill is not necessarily a likeable character but Ray Liotta makes him compelling to watch and makes you feel the seductive allure of the gangster life. 

And he makes you angry to watch him fuck it up. The penultimate sequence in the movie, Henry's last day as a gangster, is a frantic, hyperactive mess, Henry trying to do too many things at one time while his cocaine fueled paranoia burns through him like a wildfire. 

GoodFellas is an engrossing character study of what people do to survive and prosper in a world that provides opportunities for wealth and a never ending risk of pain, loss and even death.  

GoodFellas is an epic film that deserves it's a rep as one of the best crime movies ever made.

Although I still have a place in my heart for the pigeons on GoodFeathers.