I love the movie Goodfellas (and pretty much every other Scorsese movie I’ve seen)! The very first time I saw Goodfellas it was on tv and I was flipping channels and got sucked in. I think Scorsese did a great job with Goodfellas and making you feel like an actual part of the movie. You get so engrossed in this world of Henry’s, the gangster life; with the great use of freeze frames, voiceovers, and camera shots fallowing the characters you feel involved somehow like you’re a part of it, walking around with them in the movie.
We’ve seen a couple different kinds of gangster movies, and I have to say my favorite style of it are movies like Goodfellas. It doesn’t seem romanticized or over the top, it’s gritty bloody dirty and it feels real and not the stereotypical hollywoodized movie and sometimes that’s a bit refreshing.
I also like the characters in this movie, I think they did a great job of depicting each one in a way were you understood why they were involved with crime and had justification for what they did. It was great that everybody in this film had motivation, compared to Bonnie and Clyde where there was hardly any motivation given. You understand why they want to be gangster, they were treated like stars and they got respect. You understood why Karen stayed with Henry even though he beat up a guy, handed her a gun, and cheated on her she was attracted to and seduced by the lifestyle .. the classic bad boy sydnrome. And when Jimmy starts killing everyone who did the heist and even tried to kill Henry and Karen, you understood he was nervous and scared and that’s how he knows how to solve problems. Even Tommy, the one who seemed to need the least amount of justification for his actions, you still understood that was who he was, he was the wild card you didn’t know what was going to do and which seemed largely due to the fact the fact that he had an easily bruised ego, but you still get why he did stuff without thinking.
I also love the irony at the end, when he ends up ratting on everyone and being stuck in the suburbs… specially because at the beginning of the movie that seemed to be the very last thing he would do; with him not going to school, wanted to be a gangster, and not ratting the first time he got caught. On a side note – it also cracks me up that the real Henry supposedly being in protective services gave interviews, still wanting to be known and respected.
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I agree that seeing the motivations of the characters in GoodFellas made the film and the characters within it much more believable, especially compared to Bonnie and Clyde. I thought every one of the characters was really well-developed in the film, which was impressive considering how many characters there were.
ReplyDeleteLauren, I posted a comment but Blogger deleted it--sorry. That's a great point about the irony of Henry's being exiled to the suburbs, when that was the one fate that he seemed to fear.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with the irony part. That's a part I noticed too and it made me laugh. I think if he really was all gangster like he claimed he was, he would have still tried to run from the cops or got killed in a shoot out or something, anything but ratting out everyone else. But he must not have been as gangster as he thought because he gave in to fear and pressure, gave up his dignity, turned his friends in, and made a deal with the cops to live in the suburbs. Although that does supply a pretty surprising end to the movie.
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