Robert Deniro Movie:

		List Price: $28.99		Label: Warner Home Video Salesrank: 194 Released: January 16, 2007
		Our Price: $11.40
		Used Price: $8.99
		MPAA Rating: R (Restricted) Media: Blu-ray

Editorial Review:
When Martin Scorsese, one of the world's most skillful and respected directors, reunited with two-time Oscar-winner Robert De Niro in GoodFellas, the result was one of the most powerful films of the year. Based on the true-life best seller Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi and backed by a dynamic pop/rock oldies soundtrack, critics and filmgoers alike declared GoodFellas great. It was named 1990's best film by the New York, Los Angeles and National Society of Film Critics. And it earned six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. Robert De Niro received wide recognition for his performance as veteran criminal Jimmy "The Gent" Conway. And as the volatile Tommy DeVito, Joe Pesci walked off with the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Academy Award nominee Lorraine Bracco, Ray Liotta and Paul Sorvino also turned in electrifying performances. You have to see it to believe it - then watch it again. GoodFellas explores the criminal life like no other movie.

Description of GoodFellas [Blu-ray]:
Martin Scorsese's 1990 masterpiece GoodFellas immortalizes the hilarious, horrifying life of actual gangster Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), from his teen years on the streets of New York to his anonymous exile under the Witness Protection Program. The director's kinetic style is perfect for recounting Hill's ruthless rise to power in the 1950s as well as his drugged-out fall in the late 1970s; in fact, no one has ever rendered the mental dislocation of cocaine better than Scorsese. Scorsese uses period music perfectly, not just to summon a particular time but to set a precise mood. GoodFellas is at least as good as The Godfather without being in the least derivative of it. Joe Pesci's psycho improvisation of Mobster Tommy DeVito ignited Pesci as a star, Lorraine Bracco scores the performance of her life as the love of Hill's life, and every supporting role, from Paul Sorvino to Robert De Niro, is a miracle.

GoodFellas [Blu-ray] Reviews:
classic
2009-12-21 - I never quite understood this whole deal of walking in to a pizza place and seeing paintings of gangsters on the wall--you know, those big oils with the Godfather guys, Scarface, and the guys from Goodfellas. Why would anyone glamorize these theives and killers, hang up pictures of them?

Well, the answer might be in Goodfellas. It sees low leval mob life through Henry Hill from the 1950s to 1980, back when the mafia had sizable power: unions, construction, shipping, boxing, show biz. These guys had their hands in everything, most of all, the piggy bank. Even RFK went after them, and some think it got him killed.

Hill as a teenager saw the money, the cars, the mistresses, the free passes to see Bobby Vinton. Those "guys" across the street at that cabstand had everything a boy with otherwise limited prospects could ever want.

Hill is smart as a whip and soon gets drafted--actually, he enlists. He is the kid with more money than the grown ups. He gets to park cars, hang with the gamblers. By the early 60s, he is doing airport heists.

But soon things get more violent and Hill gets hooked on cocaine. Through the 70s, it gets a lot more dangerous to be a mobster, and the violence becomes more random as the society changes. Eventually, Hill is forced out after being busted for what the mob said they were never going to do--dealing drugs.

What works so well about Goodfellas is the film does not give the crime or the violence an air of tragity or judgement. Scorcessee structues the film so it is like we are hanging out with the crime crew. In bars. In Caidlacs. On jobs. Crazy Tommy shot this guy. What are we going to do with him? All this to a rock soundtrack and jump cut editing, which increases the volocity of the roller coaster

But things do unravel and the glamor unravles with it. Goodfellas is about the price of the violence over the long haul. It sneeks up on us as much as it does Hill, and in the end, we realize what gets paid when we Scorcessee pulls the planks from under. We realize at the end the intelligent Hill has wasted his life, and hurt many on the way down. His friends are dead or have disowed him, and he gets "to live the rest of his life like a snook." in a banal noname subburb .

Just deserts. For Hill, and us for riding along.

The best mobster movie ever made
2009-11-07 - This is the second time around for this film on Blu. This edition will have the following extra features:

1.A 34-page booklet and on the discs themselves:
2. Martin Scorsese commentary track where he is joined by various cast and crew including Ray Liotta, Paul Sorvino and Nicholas Pileggi.
3. Henry Hill and FBI Agent Edward McDonald commentary.
4. Getting Made, Made Men and The Workaday Gangster making-of documentaries.
The above are all to be found on the two-disc Special Edition DVD and the recent Blu-ray.
They will be joined by:
5. Public Enemies: The Golden Age of the Gangster Film documentary - 106 minutes.
6.Four Warner Bros. mob-themed cartoons.

The documentary on the gangster film is already available separately here - Public Enemies - The Golden Age of the Gangster Film and in the boxed set Warner Gangsters Collection, Vol. 4 (The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse / Invisible Stripes / Kid Galahad / Larceny, Inc. / The Little Giant / Public Enemies: The Golden Age of the Gangster Film).

So if you have the documentary and you have the original Blu version you are getting nothing extra in this version.

As for the film itself, After you see this movie, all other mobster movies you see or ever have seen will seem like garbage. They and their cast of characters will all appear cartoonish in comparison. Of course, this is a movie about the mafia from the working man/gangster point of view, where "The Godfather" was a mafia movie filmed from the viewpoint of the executive suite, so there really is no valid comparison there. "Goodfellas" really does seem ahead of its time when you realize that the only artistic work about the mafia that compares to it in quality is the HBO series "The Sopranos", which debuted nine years after this movie was made. "Goodfellas" tells the real-life story of mobster Henry Hill, and it is largely true, although there are individual scenes that are out of sequence and others that were added for dramatic effect, such as Karen Hill flushing the coca ine down the toilet during the drug bust. Also, Tommy, the character that Joe Pesci played and the part for which he won an Oscar, was actually a composite of two separate gangsters. Other details are omitted completely, probably because they would have spun the movie off in too many different directions. For example, crime boss "Big Paulie" actually was having an affair with Henry Hill's wife, Karen. When Tommy tried to assault her and Paulie found out, that was when he alerted the Gambinos to the fact that Tommy had killed their missing crew member, "made man" Billy Batts, nine years earlier. This is the true reason that it took so long for Tommy to be killed over that incident. Thus, masterful direction of the story by Martin Scorsese in what was probably his finest film is why the audience has a more cohesive view of the mobsters portrayed in this movie than if we had been told every last detail.

What really makes this movie great is all of the personal details that enable you to see these mobsters living a largely suburban life, concerned about kids' birthday parties and getting the sauce just right for dinner, and all the while completely immersed in a completely amoral lifestyle in which murder and bribes solve everything- a lifestyle to which they would never voluntarily choose an alternative.

The film I recommend as one of the classics, but as for this version, if you have the Blu version already and you have the documentary on the gangster film, I can't see putting out this kind of money for four mobster related cartoons.

Film - 5/5
Extra features 2/5 (nothing we haven't seen before)
Averaged together = 3.5 stars

I round up from 3.5 to 4 stars just out of respect for the film.

goodfellas
2009-11-01 - awsome gangster movie!! a true story about the mob told by a gangster. from growing up and joining to leaving it in the end. ray,joe and robert are awsome in the movie!! its a longmovie on a two sided disk!!

Classic lines from a Scorcese Masterpiece
2009-10-30 - I really can't put into words how I feel about this film. A Scorcese masterpiece (for which they robbed him of Oscar), it juxtaposes, (the same way the Sopranos did later on), the real life family struggles mobsters deal with.......with their "jobs". Add to that the masterfully written dialogue, which incidentally has provided years and years of fodder for my family, and you have a film of monumental proportions---"Henry....you gotta go back to Karen.....you're not gonna get a divorce...we're not animale"....Genius! Genius!

Classic
2009-10-14 - Next to The Godfather 1 and 2 this is the best mafia flick ever made.