Goodfellas is hailed by many as the pinnacle of cinema, a towering achievement in film-making and a cornerstone of the gangster genre. Martin Scorsese’s iconic film chronicles the life of Henry Hill, an Irish-Italian American who grows up idolising the Mafia in his New York neighbourhood, subsequently spiralling into a world of crime.
The movie opens with the famous line: “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.” This true-to-life saga follows Henry’s ascent and descent in the underworld from the 1950s through to 1980. Often cited as second only to The Godfather in the echelon of mob movies, it received higher praise from acclaimed critic Roger Ebert, who hailed it as superior.
In The Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert writes: “No finer film has ever been made about organized crime – not even The Godfather.”
Goodfellas, possibly Scorsese’s most revered work, was described by USA Today as “a whopping good time” at its premiere and has remained timeless since.
The consensus on Rotten Tomatoes describes it as: “Hard-hitting and stylish, GoodFellas is a gangster classic — and arguably the high point of Martin Scorsese’s career.”
Curiously, the film enjoys even greater adulation among general movie-goers than critics on Rotten Tomatoes, boasting a dazzling 97% audience rating over the critics’ score of 94%. On IMDB, it scores a lofty 8.7 out of 10.
David Denby, writing for New York Magazine in 1990, praised the Scorsese masterpiece GoodFellas as: “GoodFellas, written by Nicholas Pileggi and Martin Scorsese, and directed by Scorsese, is the greatest film ever made about the sensual and monetary lure of crime, and the whole perversely brilliant movie comes into focus in a single, staggering shot.”
The cinematic heavyweight was placed eighth by Empire in its definitive roundup of the ‘100 Best Movies of All Time to Watch’, trailing The Godfather by five positions.
“No film hits like Goodfellas,” proclaimed the esteemed film magazine. “Just like the cocaine that turns effortlessly charismatic gangster fanboy Henry Hill into a reckless maniac, that drives him to the edge of a heart attack, that makes him paranoid (OR IS HE? ), the film enters your system with a jolt, giving you an immediate rush, and keeps you wanting more, more, more, MORE, until it finally comes crashing down, back to bleak reality, and then just finishes.
“And you have to live the rest of your life like a schnook, because, frankly, no other film compares to Goodfellas. The only solution: another big snort of Goodfellas. Scorsese, writer Nicholas Pileggi and editor Thelma Schoonmaker constructed almost the entire film like a trailer, one scene bleeding into the next, not giving you the opportunity to stop watching, to let go, to take a breath. It’s an unstoppable feat of propulsion. Now that’s cinema.”