GoodFellas

When GoodFellas, a mobster story that spanned over thirty years, was released in 1990, Ray Liotta was 36 years old and his co-stars, Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci, were both 47.  When they first pop up in the movie, they are supposed to be in their early twenties (except DeNiro, who was supposed to be around thirty).  Sure, they aged somewhat throughout the film, but until you see DeNiro put on reading glasses in the last quarter of the movie, it's pretty insignificant stuff.  I point this out because most movies would take strides to make these actors look younger, a la Patrick Stewart in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Why doesn't director Martin Scorsese bother to disguise the age of his actors?  Probably for the same reason most viewers don't notice it: because this is a cool movie and, like the wise guys they portray, these actors can get away with murder as far as America's concerned.

This is the life story of Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), an Irish kid in New York whose life dream was to be a mobster.  At a young age, he began to run (often illegal) errands for the local mob boss, Paulie Cicero (Paul Sorvino).  As he grew older, he befriended the hot-tempered Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) and the danger-loving Jimmy "The Gent" Conway (Robert DeNiro).  Together, they began hijacking trucks and lived life as young men with money often do; they drank all night, went to clubs, and enjoyed female companionship.  This continued for years, and was capped by Henry's courtship and marriage to a local girl, Karen (Lorraine Brocco).  This movie is clearly a love letter to the mobster lifestyle, with all its freedom, power and vices.  That much freedom, power and vice left unchecked will inevitably lead to a desire for more of each, though.  As Henry and his friends moved from up-and-comers in their mob family to essentially independent operators, their adventures are played for higher stakes.  Hijacking trucks with willing drivers gave way to multimillion dollar heists, organized by Jimmy.  Instead of sticking with low-risk enterprises like gambling, Henry started dealing drugs. And Tommy...well, his temper started to become the stuff of legend.  With higher stakes, the lifestyle became less friendly and more dangerous, less about the crew and more about survival.


What makes GoodFellas a great movie is its attitude.  The film opens with Ray Liotta's voice-over, famously claiming that "as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster."   That's pretty different from most film portrayals of mobsters, right?  Even in The Godfather, Michael never wanted in on the "family business."  Anyone can understand the allure of money and power, but even the most romanticized mob films show a horrible price to be paid for such indulgences.  That eventual comeuppance is inevitable for any big time gangster, but the attraction toward that danger is what sets this movie apart from its mob movie brethren.  We watch Henry Hill, Tommy DeVito, and Jimmy Conway do whatever they want to whoever they want for decades, just waiting for the hammer to eventually drop.  And when it does, there is no moment of repentance or remorse.  We just get Ray Liotta's voice-over again, telling us how ordinary civilian life, free from drugs, police, murder, and betrayal is basically for schmucks.  And we agree with him.

Interesting tidbit: GoodFellas drops about 300 F-bombs in its 145 minute run, averaging over 2 "fucks" per minute, the ninth most for any feature film. While cursing is certainly not a benchmark for quality cinema, that is an astonishing number.

The acting and directing in this movie is superb.  While Scorsese is not at his showiest here, he handles things well and oftentimes puts the camera in a position so that the viewer feels like more of a spectator, which just reconfirms the movie's fascination with the wise guy lifestyle.  As for the acting, Joe Pesci deservedly won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role.  He was loud, obnoxious, and occasionally frightening with his nonchalant attitude toward violence.  And yet, he managed to be kind of funny.  That's a tough balance to strike.  Ray Liotta is certainly more sympathetic in the lead role, but his character's purpose is to react to the mob lifestyle, so his solid performance pales in comparison to his co-lead actors.  Lorraine Brocco did a pretty good job in her supporting role, but I think she usually gets too little credit for her role in the movie; as Karen, she not only provides the "civilian" reactions to the wise guy life, but she shares the narrative.  Karen's role is often overlooked because this is such a guy movie, but the movie is told from her point of view, too, and Brocco's performance (particularly with her voice-overs) helps keep this movie from spinning into a caricature of mob life.  As far as the rest of the cast goes, they're serviceable.  Paul Sorvino is capable of some surprisingly imposing silences, but he's the highlight of the supporting cast.  Michael Imperioli and Samuel L. Jackson both make noteworthy cameos, though.

I enjoy this movie on a lot of levels, but it has never been one of my favorite Scorsese films.  Sure, it's pretty awesome, but it's soooooo looooooong!  It's not even super long at 146 minutes, but it feels about as long as The Return of the King.  Why?  I'm not sure.  Aside from using the camera to follow characters like they're celebrities, Scorsese's direction is pretty cut and dried.  The problem is certainly not the acting.  Both DeNiro and Pesci are fascinating to watch.  I think my problem with this film is the position it takes.  Not the moral position of celebrating an outlaw culture; that's pretty cool.  I'm talking about the point-of-view character.  While Henry is part of the action, he's never the most interesting character on the screen.  He's kind of like Smalls from The Sandlot, watching the greatness of Benny the Jet.  Lots of movies choose a voyeuristic POV character, but since this movie is (more or less) set up as a Henry Hill biopic, I think his character should be the most interesting cast member.  Would this movie work better from Jimmy or Tommy's point of view?  Not as the story stands, no.  I just think that, in a biopic-type movie, the main character's accomplishments should be the most dramatic and memorable ones; if you want to use a less memorable character to tell the story, fine, but use the movie to frame a more compact set of events.  As it stands, though, I see this a a major failure in the storytelling department.

Aside from my admittedly unusual personal problem with this movie, GoodFellas is an unabashed classic.  There has never been a film that depicted the life of a mobster so gloriously, and yet showed all the horror that comes with it.  For that, it deserves all the respect it has earned over the years.  Aside from The Godfather Part II, this might be the ultimate gangster movie.  It's not a masterpiece, though, with all due respect.

Youth In Revolt

All comedic actors have an image problem at some point in their careers.  Yes, it's great that Jim Carrey can talk out of his butt, or that Adam Sandler can start a sentence very quietly and then talk real loud, but eventually, they got tired of the same shtick and branched out into more varied roles.  This usually means a dramatic role that forces audiences to look at the actor in a new light, but these new roles are usually less impressive than their earlier silly stuff.  Michael Cera, who has managed to play the same character in several comedies over the past three or four years, takes a different approach to reinventing his image in Youth in Revolt.

Cera plays the lead role of Nick Twisp, a smart, introverted sixteen year old that longs to have a woman to give him a reason to desire.  He spends his time listening to Frank Sinatra vinyl and reading classic prose, trying to imagine a plausible way to lose his virginity.  It doesn't help that his family essentially rubs their sex lives in his face.  His mother (Jean Smart) is unapologetic about her low dating standards and his father (Steve Buscemi) is dating a buxom twenty-five year old (Ari Graynor).  With nothing better to do, Nick follows his mother and her boyfriend on a short vacation to a trailer park.  There, Nick meets Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday), a pretty girl his age that is interested in literature and vinyl, too, although with a distinct preference for all things French.  Since she lives in a trailer park, there's not much to do but see how the new kid is, and they begin to spend time together.  Sheeni enjoys flirting with Nick and teasing him about his virginity, while Nick is simply amazed that an attractive girl would ever speak to him, much less kiss him.  Sheeni dreams of living in France and likes the idea of "bad boys."  Nick is obviously not bad.  Still, he falls in love with her, does a few silly things and temporarily wins her affection.  Unfortunately, Nick's time in the trailer park is limited.  Nick professes his love to Sheeni and comes up with a plan for them to be together, permanently.  Sheeni's part is to find a job for Nick's unemployed father near the trailer park.  All Nick has to do is be a bad enough son for his mother to send him to live with his father.  Sheeni has her doubts about this plan, but Nick swears he can do it, so she tells him to be "very, very bad."  Enter Francois Dillinger, the agressive, selfish, rude, and (above all else) French alter-ego for Nick.  With the help of Francois, Nick gets to be very bad indeed.  Of course, being bad has its consequences, and earning love is not necessarily one of them.

Before I mention anything else, I have to say that I find Michael Cera in the Francois persona an absolutely hilarious concept.  Of course Michael Cera's bad side looks just like him, only with a wispy mustache and a part in his hair.  I loved that Nick and Francois shared the screen together, taking turns observing and being in control.  It's like the old Tom and Jerry cartoons, where Tom would have a mini-devil pop up on his shoulder and give him advice.  Actually, it's better because Francois smokes cigarettes and wears vaguely European clothing (white pants and no socks?).  I even liked how Francois held his cigarettes; it always looked cool, but was pretty unrealistic (is he holding it between his pinkie and ring finger?).  Most of Francois' manners and mannerisms feel completely fabricated, which is perfect for a character that was created by a well-read nerd that desperately wants to be cool.  You would think that Nick would be a less funny version of Cera's typical neurotic role, if only to give Francois room to work, but the Nick character also works well.  As far as I'm concerned, the Michael Cera content in this movie was great.

The rest of the movie works less well.  One of the main problems I have is with the language.  No, it's not particularly vulgar (although it's by no means a family comedy).  The dialogue for most of the cast is just not natural, for lack of a better description.  It sounds like the dialogue belongs in a volume of flowery prose, which I'm sure is the creative team's intent.  Unfortunately, this comes off as clunky; the script is pretty clever and is full of references that I cannot speak to (I'm not being egotistical, but that's hard to do in American cinema), but a lot of it feels lost in translation.  I get the impression that the book (which I haven't read) plays up Nick's love of literature and letters more than a film adaptation ever could, and it's too bad.  I think this would have worked better if the story was clearly being narrated by Nick throughout, like this movie was his screenplay about his love for Sheeni and he was an unreliable narrator.

The language could have been seen as a bizarre quirk if the pacing had been better.  This is only ninety minutes long, but it feels a lot longer, and I'm not sure why.  One reason could be the glut of secondary characters in this movie.  They are all colorful, but I don't know if they were all necessary to the story.  The pacing could be because the source material from author C.D. Payne was set up as a series of letters, a la Dracula.   I'm inclined to believe, though, that the pacing suffered because director Miguel Arteta did not edit the movie well.  So much of this movie is repetitive, hammering the same ideas over and over; I get it, Michael Cera is a subtle actor to a fault, but I don't need to be told that he's lonely and awkward more than once or twice to believe it.  It's like belaboring the point that Woody Allen is a neurotic Jewish New Yorker.

The rest of the film was fine.  The acting was all good, but most of the actors had only bit parts.  Cera was his typical awkward self, but I happen to really enjoy his awkwardness.  Portia Doubleday did a good job as his foil, but aside from showing a talent for deadpanning lines, it's hard to judge her talents.  It was nice to see Steve Buscemi in an indie movie again, even if it had him in a relationship with a woman far too attractive to be with him.  Still, casting Buscemi as Cera's dad is a good choice.  I liked Zach Galifianakis, and Ray Liotta in their small roles as the boyfriends of Nick's mom.  Fred Willard is always Fred Willard, but he gets some decent material here and that makes all the difference.  Justin Long has a bit part and I actually liked him, which is a first for me.  You might recognize Jonathan B. Wright from his small role in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist; he doesn't get much more screen time here as Nick's largely unseen nemesis, but he could be good if given more to work with.  Adhir Kalyan was an okay choice for Vijay, but there aren't really a lot of Indian actors that can play nerdy right now.  M. Emmet Walsh is clearly too old to have fathered Sheeni, but he's still funny.  I liked Mary Kay Place fine as Sheeni's mom, but I wasn't particularly impressed with Jean Smart as Nick's mom.

Between the overwhelming amount of recognizable actors, the slow pace, and the language barrier, this film's negatives overwhelm the presence of Francois Dillinger.  For a movie with such a clear-cut purpose (be bad to win the girl), the story was surprisingly slow.  Sure, I enjoyed most of the characters, but there was rarely a unique payoff for their scenes.  I wouldn't mind if one of C.D. Payne's other Nick Twisp books was eventually made into a movie, but I would hope that the filmmakers learn from this film and deliver the sharp, quick movie these characters deserve.