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| Don't tell mama about the body in the trunk. |
Being such a character-driven genre piece, there’s much to love about re-watching Goodfellas, with its smattering of brilliant performances from an all-star cast, if there ever was one to wax nostalgic about.
Making an appearance just long enough to get whacked, skinny-ass Samuel L. Jackson’s cameo as Stacks Edwards is fantastic as it is bloody and brief. The real heavyweights here, though, are Paul Sorvino and drama queen Loraine Bracco, each pouring forth raw talent at opposite ends of the spectrum, the former delivering a quiet tour-de-force as mob boss Paulie Cicero and the latter playing Karen Hill, a tightly-wound mafia wife driven to high hysterics by her husband’s besmirched career path.
That gangster is Henry Hill, played by Ray Liotta, a pretty-boy ruffian with the bluest eyes who serves as the perfect foil to partners-in-crime, James Conway (Robert de Niro) and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci). Not only does the trio condone the gory requirements of their profession, they appear to enjoy it, an unnerving trait in characters with so much simpatico.
The supporting cast provides a human tapestry over which the story weaves through, with stellar turns delivered by Martin’s mother, Catherine Scorsese, as the universal Italian mom, Illeana Douglas popping in as the doe-eyed gangster girlfriend, Rosie, and especially Debbi Mazar as top coke bitch, Sandy, who knows a thing or two about chopping up and packing blow.
Throw in the accents of Queens, New York, and the gaudy-chic style of the late '70s / early '80s and you’ve got not just an undying cult classic, but a true-ringing sociological study of a time and place that will come to exert great influence on subsequent generations of filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino.
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