Goodfellas

I meant to talk about this movie a long time ago, but I kinda got carried away from discussing movies and started talking about other things. But I feel that I haven't done this movie justice by not talking about it; its second only to The Godfather, IMO, and to a lot of other people. Provided here is a short, but detailed summary of the movie, if you haven't seen it, beware, it contains a lot of spoilers.

Goodfellas is a Martin Scorsese directed movie starring: Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, and Paul Sorvino. This movie is also based on a true story, so this combination set a very high scale for this movie, there was a lot of expectation set on this movie, and it utterly destroyed everything in its path when it came out.

The movie is narrated by Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) who starts out as a little kid and explains his early days as a poor, Irish- Italian American mix who used to aspire to be a gangster like all of the tough guys that lived across the street from him. He would stare out of the window all day and watch as they would flaunt their fancy suits, puffing on thick cigars getting whatever they wanted by merely sending someone for it. Their leader, or Don, was Paul "Paulie" Cicero (Paul Sorvino). He was a big, slow man, rarely moved or spoke, but that was because he really didn't need to. Just one glance would be enough to make the toughest gangsters jump into their cars and race off. He ran the show in the whole city, and everyone knew it. After begging his parents to work for the gangsters after school to earn some money, he got entranced by their way of life and eventually dropped out of school and worked full time, earning reputation on the streets for his association with the "wise guys" as they were called.

He then met his would- be lifelong partner, Jimmy Conway (De Niro), who was a ruthless gangster who would tip the bartender hundreds of dollars for "keeping the ice cubes cold"; he was rich as hell. He was a beast, no one messed with him, the stereotypical gangster. Jimmy introduced Henry to Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci), who was of similar age, only much more boisterous and eager to do anything it took to get a few dollars, he was also a shoe- shiner.

Below this post, is a more detailed description of the movie, walking you through the entire thing, although I urge you to watch it if you haven't already.