Fleapit revisited:Goodfellas.

"I'm funny how? I mean funny like I'm a clown? 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?" - Tommy DeVito

Back in autumn 1990, me and my mate Bugsy went to the Warner Brothers cinema in Basingstoke to see Martin Scorsese's then new film, based on the book Wiseguys by Nicholas Pileggi, Goodfellas. We didn't really know what to expect. We were more or less at a loose end. We came out raving about it and, for years after, we'd be doing impressions of the infamous unhinged rant by Tommy DeVito that starts this piece and impersonations of Anthony Powers' minor character Jimmy Two Times. 

We'd even name one of our band's, Cloth, songs after a minor character in the film:- Security Guard With Lobsters. But that was over thirty years ago and I'd not revisited the film once in those three long decades. When I saw it was up on the iPlayer I decided it was time to dive back in and see if the film really was as good as it had seemed a long time ago when were young.

Spoiler alert! It is that good. The snappy wiseguy dialogue and the relatively short scenes means it never gets boring. The music (take a deep breath:- Aretha Franklin, Bobby Darin, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Harry Nilsson, Cream, Muddy Waters, Tony Bennett, The Shangri-Las, The Ronettes, Al Jolson, Johnny Mathis, Sid Vicious (!), and, of course Layla by Derek And The Dominoes) that links the action helps the over two hour film zip along surprisingly quickly and the way the brutal and realistic feeling violence explodes so rapidly, often from seemingly innocent interactions, means you're never far from a visceral shock or two.

It's a world of Pontiacs, Cadillacs, sharp suits, card games, cigars, diners, recipes for pasta sauce (they are Italians), infidelity, casual racism, guns, knives, and people being threatened with having their heads put in pizza ovens. Balls are, regularly, busted, people get 'whacked', and bodies are found disposed of in the back of garbage trucks or frozen stiff in the back of meat trucks.

"As far back as I can remember I've always wanted to be a gangster" we're told, very early on, by Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), the film's chief protagonist and, indeed, we start with Henry, as a teenage boy, in the mid-fifties growing up in Brooklyn, working at a cab stand run by the mob, and taking regular beatings off his dad (Beau Starr).

His boss, Paulie (Paul Sorvino - who, like Liotta, passed last year), had hundreds of guys working for him. His primary business was 'protection' - but it came at a high price. Henry, though, was doing well working for Paulie. He found his job opened doors for him. At thirteen he had more money than he could spend and and was so 'respected' that other boys would carry his mum's (Elaine Kagan) groceries all the way home for him.  

Henry's introduced to Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro). Jimmy's flash, he tips doormen and bartenders $100 a time, but he's tough too. He'd been locked up at the age of eleven and by the time he was sixteen he was carrying out hits. Understandably, people were scared of him.

But he took to Henry and Henry to him. Jimmy introduces Henry to Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) and together they start to make money by stealing cargo from Idlewild airport and burning buildings down for insurance. Tommy may be 'funny', he IS funny, but he's also a psychotic bully with a hair trigger. A dirty bomb likely to go off at any moment.

It didn't particularly concern Henry. The lifestyle more than made up for the risks which Henry felt were minimal anyway. Not least because he was so good at his job. He couldn't understand people who lived normal lives and worried about their bills. "Suckers" he called them.

When he meets his future wife Karen (Lorraine Bracco) she's initially circumspect but soon Henry's extravagant wealth and borderline celebrity status seduce her and she falls into his world, increasingly moving away from her own Jewish family and friends. Henry and Karen's wedding is predictably fancy and almost every one of Paulie's relations she meets that day are either called Peter or Paul. All their wives are called Maria.

But, in 1970, when Billy Batts (Frank Vincent) insults Tommy in a bar (reminding him he used to be a shoe shine boy, Tommy and Jimmy beat him, stab him, and shoot him to death. A risky course of action because Billy Batts was a "made man" and it's not a good idea to kill a made man.

Tommy continues to become ever more psychotic and unpredictable and as things begin to escalate the gangster lifestyle stops looking like glamorous fun and begins to look like what it really is. Dangerous. Potentially fatally so.

As further murders are committed, prison sentences are served, affairs are had, heists are carried out, and drug addiction and paranoia afflicts members of the organisation we're left wondering if Tommy, Jimmy, and, most of all, Henry will manage to get out of it alive and if so .... how?

It's a brilliant film and everyone's brilliant in it (including brief cameos from Samuel L.Jackson and Vincent Gallo who I'd not really have been aware of back in 1990) though Pesci, of course, gets the juiciest role of all and absolutely relishes in it. As well as excelling at it. 

The one thing I never noticed all those years ago, though, was the fact that I didn't really care about what happened to any of the characters in the film. Even if they lived or died. I just enjoyed the ride. Perhaps that's because there's barely a sympathetic character in the whole film or perhaps that's because Scorsese had placed me in their world with such exquisite precision that I too started to feel the thrill more than I probably should have. Goodfellas is a fascinating world to visit, on television or at the cinema. It'd be a horrible one to live in. What Scorsese did so well is show us that for those that choose to live that lifestyle that realisation often comes much too late.