The Irishman may be getting all the love lately, but the real pièce de résistance of Martin Scorsese‘s lengthy career is the 1990 mob classic, Goodfellas. Not only did the movie teach us valuable tips pertaining to relationships, business, and Italian cooking, it also taught us the most valuable life lesson we could ever need: crime pays, as long as it’s a Scorsese movie. Goodfellas took Martin Scorsese to another level as a filmmaker, not to mention the actors that became globally famous from it: Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, and Joe Pesci. Every guy in America who saw this movie started to walk, talk and dress like these guys. How else do you explain the shiny, multi-buttoned suits and slicked-back hair that were so popular in the ’90s? So, in honor of its 30-year anniversary, we thought we’d put together a top 10 reasons why it’s the best Martin Scorsese film ever made. Now go home and get your shine box!
Photo by: Warner Bros.
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Goodfellas forever
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We learned how to cut garlic properly.
Ever since Goodfellas, men who think they can cook Italian food have been cutting garlic with a razor blade in order to impress whoever they're cooking for. Uncle Paulie Cicero is the reason for that.
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The greatest camera work in film history.
The Copacabana tracking shot is still revered as one of the most incredible cinematic moments s in film. Rumor has it that it took over a full day to light the room and get the timing of the shot to Scorsese's liking. After 10 takes, and over 24 hours of working on it, they finally got the shot they wanted - and it went down in film history as cinematic genius.
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We learned our most accurate life lessons.
Goodfellas taught us several things: make sure your friends are into the same things you're into, keep your house in order, Fridays are for girlfriends, Saturdays are for wives, and if you're going to bust someone's balls, you better be able to back it up. All very valuable pieces of wiseguy advice, but the two greatest things in life, without a doubt, are: never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut.
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Everybody had a friend whose dad looked like Uncle Paulie.
What Paulie and the organization do is offer protection for people who can't go to the cops. That's all he was. And everyone grew up with a kid whose dad was kind of that guy, or at least looked like he could've been that guy.
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Beating up yuppies.
Ray Liotta did what all of us have wanted to do at some point in our lives: smack around a few Polo shirt-wearing yuppies, pistol-whip style.
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De Niro is the most De Niro he's ever been.
Goodfellas was the beautiful culmination of several incredible actors hitting their sweet spot combined with an incredible script and perfect directing. De Niro was by no means a new face in Hollywood when this film released, but his performance in Goodfellas was arguably his most memorable and definitely the reference point for everything he did after.
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Joe Pesci scared everyone into loving him.
Joe Pesci stole our hearts and whatever else wasn't nailed down with his performance in Goodfellas. He's proof that physical stature is no match for pure insanity when it comes to intimidation.
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De Niro taught us how to kick a guy.
Have you ever seen anyone kick another person with such animated vigor? De Niro is the king of kicking a guy while he's down.
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'Goodfellas' made it cool to be mobbed up.
After this film came out, seemingly every guy who had two to three friends they regularly hung out with started calling themselves a "crew." We all started giving each other mob nicknames like Tutti, Uncle Paulie, Frankie No-Nose, Pete the Killer, Fat Andy, and of course, Jimmy Two-Times...who got that name cause he always used to say everything twice, like, "I'm gonna go get the papers, get the papers."
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The greatest character introduction ever.
Pete the Killer was one of the faces we met when Henry Hill walked us through the characters in his life. Mr. the Killer was Sally Balls' brother and he "took care of things" for people. This is all we ever knew about Pete the Killer, but he had the most badass introduction ever for a character who's in a film for literally four seconds.
