Director: Martin Scorsese
Year: 1990 Country: U.S. Gender : Gangster / Drama Rating:
10/10 Cast: Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, Paul Sorvino, Debi Mazar, Mike Starr, Tony Darrow, Frank Siver, Frank Vincent, Chuck Low, Frank DiLeo, Clem Caserta and Samuel L . Jackson
Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), the son of an Irish father and Sicilian mother, is fascinated by the life led by gangsters in his neighborhood in Brooklyn, where most residents are immigrants. The mob patriarch Paul Cicero (Paul Sorvino) is the protector. At thirteen, Henry, will leave the school and will become part of the organization as an errand boy. But will upgrade as it reinforces the confidence placed in him mobsters. With the complicated eighties coming to an end, years that made such remarkable works as " The Color of Money" (1986) or " Life Lessons" (1989), Scorsese meticulously prepared a long-awaited project a novel that had excited, and whose author (Nicholas Pileggi) would establish a great complicity and friendship. In fact, both were working on several versions of the script for several years and would be the first credit as a screenwriter for Scorsese since, precisely, " Dangerous Streets" (1973), which many ways is like a vibrant draft, much stammering, the movie finally premiered in late 1990, "GoodFellas." It crystallized all obsessions, all narrative and stylistic achievement, all thematic ramifications for two decades, Scorsese was hoarding and growing inside. For many it is the summit of scorsesiano film and perhaps his most personal film, and still continues its unique narrative force, its validity and its avant-garde aesthetic, and future film and therefore timeless.
We return, therefore, the gangster film that is often associated with creative figure its director, but as we have seen in this review of his career, from "Dangerous Streets" had stayed away from this topic. And although perhaps in "Raging Bull " (1980) the New York mafia appeared tangentially, this association is inevitable with so few titles, since very few filmmakers have explored with such clarity in that universe of fragile loyalties, few unscrupulous and savage daily. Scorsese spoke with great talent losers who want to regain their dignity, petty artists of great talent, self-destructive boxer, lonely taxi drivers and schizoid, but mostly he will be remembered, for many years, for his book of the underworld of New York, Boston or Las Vegas. So things are. However, I have no doubt that today we will talk about one of his greatest films, whose wake is still felt today with great intensity (a show like "The Sopranos" is unthinkable without its previous existence) and that Scorsese brought out his particular perversion of the American dream. It has often been said that "Good Boys" is the movie about the most important mafia from " The Godfather" (1972). Maybe it is, but Scorsese's film stands as the reverse of that tragedy, because while Coppola's fiction tends to mystify members of the organization of Italian origin, the story scorsesiano away from all idealism or scope tragic to tell, from a perspective that blends the nostalgic with the cynical, several decades of existence of Henry Hill (who really existed) and its traveling companions.
While Coppola told a story of power and blame the focus on large heads, Scorsese prefers to concentrate on middle managers, men of (dis) trust, for without doubt much more interesting to the idiosyncrasies and scorsesiano style, so prone to explore with passion and realism to characters that in their daily lives, are faced to frequent and unpredictable outbursts of violence. "Since I had use of reason wanted to be a gangster", is the first sentence of the protagonist of the story, a sensational Ray Liotta, begins to structure this perversion of the traditional American story of nobody who would one day become someone powerful ( even president of the country). Like other great characters scorsesianos, an obsession Hill leads the life: being part of the mafia in his neighborhood community. His magnificent voice-over (often a cynicism almost provocative), at the end of the story will have a partial narrative justification, is the perfect complement to a scene which prevents any orthodoxy film or classical presentation of events. That is, the rise and fall does not follow the rules of the classic tale of black cinema in favor of impressionism and realism that puts it another aesthetic level. The level of memory, nostalgia for a bygone era irretrievably lost, but with the clarity of finding the time and the reasons that everything was spoiled. And with a clear and unbiased view, Scorsese talks about subjects he knows very well: growing up in a working class neighborhood where the gangsters do what they please without anyone could ask for, inter alia, because the minimum that you can happen is that you open the head to death. The late fifties, the turbulent sixties, gray seventies.
Assuming the enormous gaps in a history spanning many years, the eminent Italian-American filmmaker plunges accurately in the initial learning in the splendor and decay half end without the slightest drop of internal rhythm, struggling the most in a seemingly trivial detail, so much detail that becomes one of the greatest defenses of its direction: to recreate an almost documentary life, stopping at specific moments that can break the continuous stream, but that crystallize events highly expressive value. For example, the famous dialogue between Henry Hill and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci), where everything ends up as a joke, without the expected outbreak of violence, because it is not necessary to realize that Tommy is a dangerous and unstable character. Actually, it is a study of the fragile bonds of friendship, as the three character players (Henry, Tommy and Jimmy) form a kind of society is always on the verge of breakup, with the perennial threat of betrayal, moral duplicity of the stab in the back. Three well defined characters, on the other. Jimmy Conway, played with his usual shaft by the great Robert De Niro, would become the most vicious and cunning of all. But none of them really part of the family, even earning large amounts of money and see the need to play the type and consistently freedom. Therefore, it is actually another story of losers who somehow know the ephemeral nature of their existence, that everything can end abruptly with jail or shot in the head, and so enjoy life in this and try to squeeze the maximum time. From there I think Scorsese was born interest in portraying the most immediate life possible for these subjects, giving up mafia tell another story as they did his admired Hawks and Walsh.
the invaluable complicity of the German operator Michael Ballhaus (who and working under Scorsese's other films, and that he would repeat it in the future) Scorsese achieves mastery of very complex disciplines of directing actors and stage, initiating an era of maturity in addition to absolute stylistic consistency and aesthetic modernism in the nineties. A maturity that goes far to bring more than ever, behind a probable marketability, their own artistic needs. Consistency that except tripping may become necessary (as his next film), an ironic result of the disappointment of some of his followers. And avant-garde that has moved, and I think wrong, narrative film several decades with each of the masterpieces that filmed in the nineties. In the case of "Good Boys", one has the feeling that Scorsese films like breathe, without effort, when in fact its dramatic and expressive solutions elaboradísimas be guessed. Besides directing actors is also masterful, knowing out of every one of his interpreters as appropriate to their roles. We knew that De Niro in the hands of Scorsese's great, but here again leave us breathless as we got with Travis Bickle and Jake LaMotta. Restrained, tight, capable of transmitting a whole class of interpretation with a smile, a look, the way of walking, without the fuss and grimaces to now is so prone. Joe Pesci takes all his verbal and gestural flow disproportionately to compose a mythical character, which earned him an Oscar. And never was and never will be.
"Goodfellas" is the mature work of its director, a summary and a summary of a particular world and an original vision of friendship, work, social groups, life and values of each, which is also mature in the formal and door to a cinema where there's nothing left, where the adequacy and the showcasing of all members of technical and artistic impact on the perfection of all, a common goal, a goal achieved. In a word, absolute freedom. Dante episodes or funny, but always vibrant, alive. The number of anthologies sequences of this film is literally amazing, filmed with an almost adolescent energy, playful and serious at the same time. Scorsese had become a teacher. That year he competed at the Oscars with the wonder of "The Godfather, Part III" and "Dances with Wolves", and had to settle for the actor for the great Pesci. Meanwhile, Costner stood with best picture and best director, and other five, in another of the great blunders of California annual awards. Consider the stammering, though colorful, Kevin Costner's work as superior to Martin Scorsese deployed teachers in this masterpiece, is a hoax. Everything in the epidermal and "beautiful" work of softness and emulation Costner is more or less achieved, the great codes of the Western, in "Good Boys" is the establishment, flowering and splendor of a unique talent.
"Scorsese on top of his career
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