Good­fel­las (1990)

Let’s pour one out for Ray Liot­ta, the last man (bare­ly) stand­ing in Mar­tin Scorsese’s rois­ter­ing gang­land fire­work dis­play, Good­fel­las. Glanc­ing over his exten­sive and var­ied career with­in the movie busi­ness, this icon­ic title remains a lofty if pre­car­i­ous peak. It’s akin to the moment where his twin­kle eyed mafioso-in-wait­ing, Hen­ry Hill, is ush­ered through to the bustling inner sanc­tum of an exclu­sive lounge club. A fiancé-to-be is hooked on his arm, and he is plant­ed front and cen­tre by kind insis­tence of the toad­y­ing man­age­ment and a silky-smooth extend­ed track­ing shot.

This is the moment where he gets the spe­cial favours, and all his peers are forced to look on as he sashays through the cig­ar smoke and right into their eye-line. With all due respect to this unique lead­ing man, his career after Good­fel­las saw him drift on a gen­tle down­ward tra­jec­to­ry which, for a film of this stature, is no big thing. But maybe this is the film that cursed him, that opened uninvit­ing door­ways to roles in quick fix, sub­stance-neu­tral gang­ster flicks and VHS shelf-fill­ing action crap­tac­u­lars. When a sup­port­ing role in a Guy Ritchie film can be con­sid­ered a late career high­light, then we most cer­tain­ly have a problem.

Good­fel­las is a ter­ri­fy­ing film because, like much of Scorsese’s best work, it is about the lives of avun­cu­lar psy­chopaths, and pret­ty-boy Liot­ta bril­liant­ly encap­su­lates that fetid con­tra­dic­tion. Of all the mur­der­ous thugs on show, he is by far the kind­est, the one you’d like to see look­ing down on you as he boots your face into a pulp. Here is a man whose first expe­ri­ence of true love is not from a stolen front-seat kiss, it’s the moment he cold-cocks a roman­tic rival in a sub­ur­ban dri­ve­way, the victim’s effete pals look­ing on through arcs of blood.

To see Liot­ta in a film now is like a trig­ger warn­ing – he might ini­tial­ly come across as sweet­ness and light, but it’s only a mat­ter of time before he starts screech­ing, sweat­ing and staving skulls. That stig­ma is unhelp­ful. Unadorned kind­ness can nev­er be part of his reper­toire because of who he is and his past pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tions. He is the boy next door who kills peo­ple. That he has made a life from this unique set of tal­ents is cer­tain­ly laud­able, but maybe he’s an actor whose best was revealed too soon. Yet he is great in Good­fel­las because of the wing­men who help him. It’s down to a well oiled and minute­ly bal­anced ensem­ble of actors. They draw the best from him.

Good­fel­las is strange in that you think Robert De Niro would be the film’s focal point, but his Jim­my, a para­noiac charmer who only laughs as oth­ers suf­fer, sim­mers in the wings with­out ever real­ly boil­ing over. It’s as if he knows he’s had his shot at the title with Rag­ing Bull, Taxi Dri­ver, The King of Com­e­dy, et al, and he’s allow­ing the new kid a chance. De Niro’s per­for­mance is mut­ed and unas­sum­ing, maybe even a lit­tle one-note (“Pay me my fuckin’ mon­ey!” etc, etc), but this could be viewed as an actor­ly ges­ture, allow­ing Liot­ta his long-await­ed dues, under­stand­ing that while he is a facil­i­ta­tor for the dra­ma, this is not his story.

Joe Pesci, mean­while, reignites the size doesn’t mat­ter cre­do from the days when James Cagney and Edward G Robin­son flew the flag for diminu­tive badass­dom. His per­for­mance is extro­vert and astound­ing, occa­sion­al­ly verg­ing on the sur­re­al. Whether it’s Pesci’s nat­ur­al body move­ment or some­thing affect­ed for the role, he brings a bal­let­ic qual­i­ty to the reg­u­lar beat­ings he administers.

There’s a crisp quick­ness to the way he unsheathes his firearm and shoots unfor­tu­nate drink-for­get­ting lack­ey, Spi­der. And too, the man­ner in which his short arms flails to help him keep bal­ance as he’s kick­ing Frank Vincent’s Bil­ly Batts to death in a dive bar. Yet where Di Nero goes soft and Pesci goes hard, they part ways to allow Liot­ta that com­fort­able seat, right at the front and cen­tre. Maybe a grand sec­ond act is yet to come, and some upstart mav­er­ick will pluck him from obscu­ri­ty and gift him with the role of a lifetime.

As it stands, Liot­ta is out there in the unknown, a lost schnook with his bowl of noo­dles and ketchup. Good­fel­las stands tes­ta­ment to the fact that some­one would do well to bring him in from the cold.