Film
GoodFellas
Scorsese's kinetic, three-decade sprint through the Lucchese crime family, narrated by a wiseguy who never stops selling you the good life even as it curdles. It's funny, terrifying, gorgeously shot and edited like a heart attack. For anyone who wants to understand why organised crime looked glamorous before it looked like a body count.
If you liked this
Casino1995
Same director, same De Niro and Pesci, same voiceover-driven rise-and-fall structure, just moved to Vegas and dipped in gold leaf and paranoia. It's the widescreen cousin.
But It's longer, colder, and more about systems than friendship — some find it repeats the trick without the warmth.

The Departed2006
Scorsese again, but tighter and meaner, with Nicholson doing a gleeful monster routine and a plot that keeps folding in on itself. Won him the Oscar this one should have.
But It's a Boston cops-and-robbers thriller first, character study second — less hangout, more machine.

The Sopranos1999
Takes the same guys-in-tracksuits texture and stretches it across six seasons of therapy, panic attacks and ducks in a swimming pool. The definitive answer to 'what happens after the glamour wears off.'
But It's a slow-burn commitment, and Tony Soprano is a much harder man to like than Henry Hill.

The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Public Enemy1931
Same engine — charismatic small-time hood seduced by fast money and violence, destroyed by the same forces that made him — filmed while gangsters like Capone were still alive to complain about it.
James Cagney's star-making turn as a Prohibition gangster who claws his way up and gets flattened by the fall — the template Scorsese was riffing on, sixty years earlier and in black and white.
But Creaky by modern standards, stagey dialogue, and a moralising ending the Hays Code demanded — it's history as much as entertainment.

More like this (8)
Donnie Brasco1997
Depp undercover, Pacino as the doomed old-timer who trusts him — a quieter, sadder look at the same world, built on loyalty rather than adrenaline.
But It's melancholic where Goodfellas is manic; if you wanted the party, this is the hangover.

Mean Streets1973no page yet
Scorsese's own scrappy first draft of this whole world — same streets, same Catholic guilt, a fraction of the budget and none of the polish.
But Rough, low-fi, structurally loose — a fascinating sketch, not a finished painting.
Heat1995
De Niro again, this time as a cool professional thief matched against Pacino's obsessive cop, with the genre's best bank heist and shootout for scale.
But It's procedural and controlled where Goodfellas is chaotic — cops-and-robbers chess, not a decade-long bender.

American Gangster2007
Denzel Washington builds a Harlem heroin empire with the same seductive rise-then-fall shape, narration and all, dressed in immaculate 70s tailoring.
But Slicker and more conventional — it wants you to admire the craftsmanship more than feel the sickness.

Miller's Crossing1990
The Coen brothers' gangster picture, all shadow and dialogue and double-crosses, for when you want the genre's poetry rather than its documentary grit.
But Stylised and talky in a very different register — closer to a hardboiled novel than a memoir.

Layer Cake2004
British, cocky, narrated by a criminal who thinks he's smarter than everyone — the same restless energy transplanted into London's cocaine economy.
But Younger, glossier, more music-video than epic — a good time, not a masterpiece.

Cocaine Cowboys2006
Same seduction of easy money and violence narrated by the people who lived it, minus the fictional distance — this is what Henry Hill's voiceover sounds like when there's no script protecting you from it.
A documentary about Miami's 1970s-80s drug trade, told by the actual smugglers and killers, grinning about the money and the murders with unsettling comfort.
But No stars, no polish, just talking heads and archive footage — the horror is real, which makes it less fun and more sobering.

Mad Men2007
Same moral arc dressed in a suit instead of a tracksuit: ambition curdling into hollowness, a narrator you're seduced by before you notice how rotten the seduction is.
No guns, no bodies — just Madison Avenue ad men lying, cheating and drinking their way up a different kind of pyramid, glamorous right up until it isn't.
But It's slow, interior, and swaps kinetic violence for repressed emotional damage — a very different pace and a very different kind of tension.

People
Cast
Robert De NiroJames Conway
Ray LiottaHenry Hill
Joe PesciTommy DeVito
Lorraine BraccoKaren Hill
Paul SorvinoPaul Cicero
Frank SiveroFrankie Carbone
Tony DarrowSonny Bunz
Mike StarrFrenchy
Frank VincentBilly Batts
Chuck LowMorris Kessler
Frank DiLeoTuddy Cicero
Henny YoungmanHenny Youngman
Directing
- Martin ScorseseDirector
- Joseph P. ReidyFirst Assistant Director
- Sheila PaigeScript Supervisor
- Vebe BorgeSecond Assistant Director
- Deborah LupardSecond Second Assistant Director
- Joseph P. ReidySecond Unit Director
Writing
- Nicholas PileggiBook
- Martin ScorseseScreenplay
- Nicholas PileggiScreenplay
Production
- Bruce S. PustinAssociate Producer
- Ellen LewisCasting
- Laura RosenthalCasting Assistant
- Barbara De FinaExecutive Producer
- Steve RoseLocation Manager
- Irwin WinklerProducer
- Todd ArnowProduction Accountant
- Alesandra M. CuomoProduction Office Coordinator
- Bruce S. PustinUnit Production Manager
Recommended by
The Sopranos, Analyze This, The Godfather, Pulp Fiction, The Departed, The Godfather Part II, Casino, Donnie Brasco, A Prophet, Boardwalk Empire, The Public Enemy, The Wolf of Wall Street, Boogie Nights, Scarface, American Made, American Hustle, I, Tonya, The Untouchables, City of God, Lord of War, The Age of Innocence, The Untouchables, On the Waterfront, Raging Bull, Tulsa King, Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger, Carlito's Way, A Bronx Tale, Once Upon a Time in America, The Irishman, White Heat, Killers of the Flower Moon, The Roaring Twenties, Scarface, Underworld, Black Mass