Film

GoodFellas

Name: GoodFellas
Genre: Drama, Crime
Released: 1990
Cast: Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, Paul Sorvino

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.

TMDb rating

4.2

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love crime stories told with restless energy, where a voiceover pulls you through a life of hustle, swagger and slow-building dread, and where the filmmaking itself is as thrilling as the plot.

Skip it if you want a tidy moral frame or a slow, contemplative pace; this one runs nearly two and a half hours at a breathless clip, and its violence and profanity are unflinching.

What it asks of you: It asks for close attention across a long run, with a rapid, kinetic rhythm that rarely lets up, and a tolerance for coarse language and brutal scenes you will not be spared.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

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.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from GoodFellas

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.

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 Streets1973

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.