Chiasmus cult cinema trailers - "Goodfellas" (1990). *These will be ongoing posts, courtesy of the A.Glass DVD collection. As I offer via Chiasmus Cult trailers, my summarized overviews*

 

"Goodfellas" (1990) directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Nicholas Pileggi, who wrote the book to which the novel is based off, tilted "Wiseguy" (1985), documenting the rise of the career criminal, the late Henry Hill, who was an associate of the Lucchese crime family of the 1950s and early 1980s, and Hill's subsequent fall.   And there is no doubting Scorsese's skillful romanticization of the novel, and its film adaptation, which plays out over 2 hours, and depending on how you view the movie, is a gloficiation of the criminal lifestyle, whilst de-glorifying it at the same time.  With excesses of violence, and bravado constantly packed into each of the sequences, while the story telling bends the facts for good storytelling, with Scorsese's love of movie scores, you would be forgiven if you enjoy this bullet ridden, blood splattered, roller coaster ride of how crime families, particularly the mafia do indeed mimic excesses of a capitalist society, within all of its dichotomy and greed.  

And it is the ensemble of actors which assist in expressing Scorsese's reworking of Pileggi's book, setting the tone of who is likable and believable. With believable winning out, when each of the actors ad libbed, at their rehearsals, encouraged by Scorsese, later added to the script, from Robert De Niro playing the Irish American gangster and associate of the Lucchese crime family, "Jimmy Conway", with the surname changed to "Burke", and the late Ray Liotta, as "Henry Hill", who does an astounding job of narration throughout the movie, almost like a confession to the audience, without the desire for redemption.  And of course, "Joe Pesci", who plays the unstable, *amusing and hyper violent Thomas DeSimone, with his surname, for the movie also, changed to "DeVito".

Despite the fact bending narrative, mixed with the factional, noted would be the Lufthansa heist of 1978, the largest theft in American history, and the clumsiness of the theifs thereafter, with a slew of murdered associates connected with the heist, showing up all over Manhattan, via the paranoia of Conway, who was the main ringleader.  As the whole riding the wave of organized Mafia crime, begins to unwind in the 1980s, from Hill's minute-to-minute cocaine use, and selling, which is he was warned by the Mafiosi boss "Paulie Cicero" played by the late Paul Sorvino, not to sell "junk", as it will bring heat on the 'family'.  The crime doesn't pay narrative, somewhat is shared towards the end of the movie by Scorsese, as the film winds down, with Hill and his wife "Karen Hill", portrayed with a shared intensity by Lorraine Bracco, both fearing for the lives, become informants to the FBI (bringing down his former associates of the Lucchese crime family), after Hill is caught selling cocaine, and they go into Witness Protection Program, disappearing into an unknown suburbia, to become, as Hill (Ray Liotta monologues) at the very end of the movie,  "See, the hardest thing for me was leaving the life. I still love the life...There's no action. I have to wait around like everyone else. Can't even get decent food. Right after I got here I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I'm an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook."   And one cannot forget Joe Pesci's, playing the mentally unstable Thomas DeSimone line, directed at Henry Hill, early in the movie, as one of its most memorable, *"I amuse you? I make you laugh, I'm here to fucking amuse you? What do you mean funny, funny how? How am I funny?"

"Goodfellas" is entertainment at best, with enough cult movie lines and scenes, to make it a cult classic.

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(A.Glass 2025)