John Chard

In a world that's powered by violence, on the streets where the violent have power, a new generation carries on an old tradition. Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas is without question one of the finest gangster movies ever made, a benchmark even. It’s that rare occasion for a genre film of this type where everything artistically comes together as one. Direction, script, editing, photography, driving soundtrack and crucially an ensemble cast firing on all cylinders. It’s grade “A” film making that marked a return to form for Scorsese whilst simultaneously showing the director at the summit of his directing abilities. The story itself, based on Nicholas Pileggi’s non-fiction book Wiseguy, pulls absolutely no punches in its stark realisation of the Mafia lifestyle. It’s often brutal, yet funny, unflinching yet stylish, but ultimately from first frame to last it holds the attention, toying with all the human emotions during the journey, tingling the senses of those who were by 1990 fed up of popcorn movie fodder. It’s not romanticism here, if anything it’s a debunking of the Mafia myth, but even as the blood flows and the dialogue crackles with electricity, it always remains icy cool, brought to us by a man who had is eyes and ears open while growing up in Queens, New York in the 40s and 50s. Eccellente! 9/10