Ever since his breakout hit Mean Streets, Martin Scorsese has been renowned for telling stories that humanize gangsters and subvert the typical Hollywood mafia movie with a more accurate portrayal of the Italian-American experience. This thesis reached its pinnacle with Scorsese’s 1990 masterpiece Goodfellas. Goodfellas plays like a mafia home movie. It has a sense of intimacy and a ring of authenticity that are almost never seen in gangster films. Goodfellas looks beyond the usual genre archetypes to explore the real human beings who get caught up in organized crime.

Goodfellas chronicles the life of New York mobster Henry Hill, from his working-class upbringing to his tumultuous career in organized crime and his ultimate undoing in the illicit drug trade. As far back as he can remember, Henry grew up idolizing the mafia, but when he joins their ranks as a mid-level mobster, he quickly realizes it’s not all roses. Whereas The Godfather indulges in the glamorous lifestyle of the boss and his inner circle, Goodfellas takes a look at the lower-ranking guys who have to do the boss’ dirty work and only get to enjoy a fraction of the glamor.

Goodfellas’ Manic Energy Captures The Whirlwind Of Life In The Mafia

Scorsese Pulls Out All The Cinematic Stops

With the rapid pacing of Thelma Schoonmaker’s editing and the frantic nonlinear storytelling of Scorsese and Nicholas Pileggi’s script, Goodfellas recaptures the manic energy of Jules and Jim’s opening scene and stretches it to feature-length. Scorsese pulls out all the tricks in the cinematic playbook — freeze frames, fourth-wall breaks, voiceover narration, zippy montages, meticulously crafted oners — to reflect the feverish whirlwind of life in the mob. The Goodfellas soundtrack sounds like fidgety fingers let loose on a jukebox, flitting from Tony Bennett to The Shangri-Las to Bobby Darin to Cream to Muddy Waters.

Scorsese and his cinematographer Michael Ballhaus crafted every sH๏τ in the movie with intention. As young Henry watches the mobsters outside his window, Scorsese borrows a sH๏τ of Norman Bates spying on Marion Crane from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho to suggest a voyeuristic gaze and highlight just how enamored he is with their lifestyle. At the diner, Scorsese uses a slow dolly zoom to illustrate Jimmy’s paranoia as the walls are closing in. In the helicopter sequence, he uses extreme closeups, frenetic cuts, frenzied camera movements, and a constantly changing soundtrack to capture Henry’s coke-frazzled mindset.

Goodfellas Is A Cautionary Tale

A Life Of Crime Can Only End One Of Two Ways

Goodfellas set the precedent for Scorsese’s gangster biopics; it’s a cautionary tale warning its audience against a life of crime. Like Casino and The Irishman after it, Goodfellas cautions us that the criminal path can only end one of two ways: with a swift execution or living in fear of a swift execution. Goodfellas’ ending hammers this home when Henry stands on the doorstep of his suburban prison and sees his whacked friend Tommy DeVito recreating a shooting scene from The Great Train Robbery. The message is clear: he’ll spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder.

The first half successfully seduces us with the siren song of the mafia, the same way Henry gets swept up in it. The iconic tracking sH๏τ of Henry skipping the queue at the Copacabana and taking Karen through the kitchen to a table placed especially for them right by the stage has the same effect on us that it has on Karen — it doesn’t seem half-bad. And then, in its second half, Goodfellas shows the devastating cost of falling into this life. After the fatal mistake of killing made man Billy Batts, Henry’s world collapses in on itself.

Ray Liotta Leads An Incredible Cast

Joe Pesci More Than Earns His Best Supporting Actor Oscar

The cast of Goodfellas all deliver incredible performances. Ray Liotta anchors the movie with a lead turn that’s charismatic and darkly hilarious, but also brutally raw in his portrayal of abuse and addiction. Lorraine Bracco painfully captures Karen’s emotional anguish, Robert De Niro masterfully conceals the ruthlessness of Jimmy Conway under a facade of friendliness, and Paul Sorvino manages to convey the fear that Paulie strikes into people with a single look. Joe Pesci more than earns his Oscar with his scene-stealing turn as Tommy, making a violent sociopath strangely lovable (and making a true-crime thriller funnier than most comedies).

Goodfellas opens with three gangsters driving upstate to dispose of the corpse in their trunk, only to find that he’s not quite ᴅᴇᴀᴅ yet, and it maintains that level of intensity, allure, and pitch-black humor until the climax. Save for Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, Goodfellas might be Scorsese’s masterpiece and — on par with The Godfather and its first sequel — it’s the greatest gangster movie ever made.