There will be spoilers for this and maybe for Breaking Bad too
Some Background
Last Monday I watched a well-known movie about the mob called Goodfellas. I’ve heard much about it and The Godfather but never was interested in either, but I’m currently watching Better Call Saul which deals with crime and criminal organizations, so I figured I’d check out Goodfellas. I picked it over The Godfather because I read this one comment that basically said, “The Godfather is how the mob wants to be seen. Goodfellas is how they actually are.” That’s roughly the quote, I can’t remember the name of the commenter, but thank you. Anyways, onto the movie.
Recap
Goodfellas follows Henry Hill, a half Sicilian/half Irish young man born and raised in New York city. He grew up with seven other sibling and was the son of an Irish-American electrician and a mother who immigrated to the U.S. from the old country. Specifically. Young Henry did very poorly in school due to dyslexia and grew up idolizing the “gentlemen” driving Cadillacs and wearing fancy suits coming in and out of the cab company across the street was a front for the Cicero Crime Family in the neighborhood. The head of the family was Paul “Paulie” Cicero. Anyways, like I said, Henry “As far back I could remember I always wanted to be a gangster” Hill eventually started working for them. Small stuff like making deliveries, parking a “gentleman’s” cadillac, etc. Eventually he stopped going to school which got him beaten by his father, so Paulie “ensured” that no more letters from the school would make it to the Hills’ residence by roughing up the mailman who delivered letters to Henry’s house. Soon Henry was not only parking cars but blowing them up. especially ones that belonged to people who got on the bad side of “the family.”
Scene from Goodfellas of Henry doing the family’s dirty work
It brought him good money. He was even making more money than most adults and every Sunday he didn’t even have to wait in line at the bakery to buy bread, he was always dealt with first. Some kids even carried his mother’s groceries on the way home. “You know why? It was outta respect.”
Henry doing dirty work and making money
Soon Henry met Jimmy Conway (named Burke in real life and played by Robert DeNiro) a young guy, “but he was already a legend” and just like Henry he too was Irish, well half Irish in Henry’s case. Anyway, Jimmy had a reputation as one of the most terrifying men in the whole city. Just eleven when he was first locked up and by sixteen was doing hits for different bosses. But his true passion was theft, he lived for it. “Jimmy was the kind of guy who rooted for the bad guys in the movies.” Jimmy would steal booze, cigarettes, razor blades, shrimp & lobsters, etc. “Shrimp & Lobsters were best they weren’t really fast.” And most of the time the drivers of the trucks Jimmy stole from would hand over their cargo in exchange for a cut.
One day when Henry was selling presumably stolen cigarettes, he got pinched (mob-speak for arrested) but the family looks out for its own and got him out and will get him out as long as:
“You never rat on your friends and you always keep your mouth shut.”
Keep this in mind for later
As Henry got older (now played by Ray Liotta Rip) he would continue working for the mob and steal trucks on the side. Him, Jimmy Conway/Burke, and Tommy Devito (played by Joe Pesci) would form a tight trio doing work together like staging heists on airports to getting into a fight with another mobster named Billy Batts and end up whacking him. They think nothing of it and move on.
Eventually Henry meets a Jewish woman named Karen and at first they don’t hit it off but he falls for her after seeing her react to him standing her up. He likes the feistiness in her. Soon they marry and he moves into her home. Their relationship is a rocky one with her voicing her complaints about Henry staying out and coming home late at night and clearly not approving of his lifestyle, yet she stays. At one point, an old friend of hers starts making advances despite her saying no and when Henry finds out, he goes to where the guy is and beats the living shit out of him. Karen clearly upset at what happened, yet found herself turned on by the hyper-masculine aura around Henry. Anyway, they would have to girls and Henry tries to balance his family life with life working for “the family” and he also takes a whore on the side which doesn’t help his relationship with Karen which caused Paulie and Jimmy to intervene and straighten things out. Meanwhile, Henry and Jimmy went down to Tampa to “collect” money from someone who owed them. They resorted to threatening to dump the guy in the lion’s area at the local zoo. He caved, but it turned out the guy they threatened to feed to lions had a sister who was a typist for the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigations)
“She gave up everybody. Jimmy, me, even her brother.”
Henry Hill
They ended up getting 10 years in a federal penitentiary, but their prison experience wasn’t like most peoples’. They had nice dinners, rooms, and the guards would even get them things like bread, cheese, wine, etc. and the guards who didn’t partake wouldn’t rat on the guys who did. Meanwhile Henry and Karen’s relationship was even more strained because Henry was being visited by his whore. Eventually Henry got out and Paulie warned him not to get involved with selling drugs, especially with Jimmy and Tommy.
Paulie warns Henry about getting into the drug business
However, Henry ignores these warnings and goes into the business with Jimmy and Tommy and starts getting shipments of drugs from Philadelphia. He even has another girl on the side (who clearly gets high off of her own supply) helping with the business and he has a more than friendly relationship with her. Around the same time that Henry got out, Jimmy gathered up the men for what was then the biggest score in American History: The Lufthansa Heist. It was so big that Henry was screaming and celebrating in the shower when he heard what his buddies did.
However, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. One of the guys involved with the heist. A man named Stacks Edwards, was supposed to steal the panel truck and get rid of it via a friend in Jersey, but instead he got stoned and went to his girlfriend’s place and when he woke up the truck was discovered by the cops and claimed to get prints from the steering wheel, Tommy had to whack Stacks. They had to take out another guy named Morrie who was killed because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut and the rest of the crew was eventually offed because they disobeyed Jimmy’s orders that forbid them from buying expensive shit. (Guess what they did?) Henry was only spared because he kept his mouth shut and made himself useful and him, Jimmy, and Tommy were making money through Henry’s Pittsburgh connection.
Sometime after Henry finds out Tommy was gonna be a “made man”, which means you’re untouchable and you can mess with anybody as long as they aren’t made either. “It’s like a license to stead, it’s a license to do anything.” Henry and Jimmy were happy for him, especially Jimmy. You’d be forgiven for thinking he was being made, which must’ve stung hard, since neither Jimmy nor Henry would never be made due to not being full-blood Italians who can trace their roots to the old country. (Though Henry’s mother was Sicilian but I guess his Irish blood cancelled that out)
Anyways, unfortunately it was a trap and Tommy was whacked. Turns out Billy Batts was a made man and Tommy wasn’t made when he whacked him, so it was plain old revenge. Jimmy took it hard, so hard he knocked over a cheap looking phone booth and wept in the open. There was nothing him or Henry could do about it.
Later, during a particularly busy day of common criminality, family dinner, and picking up his wheelchair-bound brother at the hospital Henry found himself being followed by a helicopter (real sketchy stuff) He’s busted and his wife Karen flushes his drugs down the toilet to hide the evidence because turns out they were NARCS. Eventually, Karen had her mother put her house up and used the money to bail out Henry, so he could try to straighten things out with Paulie who was pissed and Henry was afraid he’d whack him and when Henry found out Karen flushed what he needed, he was even more angry and afraid. Eventually, desperate and afraid. Henry became the one thing he was taught never to be a rat. Him and Karen went into witness protection.
Witness Protection and testifying against the Cicero Crime Family
He ratted out on all his old “buddies” and mentor/boss. From Paulie to Jimmy. Henry remained in Witness Protection until he was arrested in Seattle for narcotics conspiracy and received five years probation. Since ‘87 he’s been clean, however, he and Karen separated in ‘89. On June 12th, 2012 he passed away. Paul Cicero would die in ‘88 of respiratory illness aged 73 in Ft. Worth Federal Prison. At the time of making the film Goodfellas Jimmy Conway/Burke was serving twenty to life in a New York State prison and was going to be eligible in for parole in 2004 but he got cancer and passed away on April 13th, 1996.
My thoughts and Analysis
This is an excellent movie that if you haven’t seen, go watch it you won’t regret it. Ray Liotta as Henry Hill knocked it out of the park. Along with Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci as Jimmy and Tommy respectively. Henry is an interesting character. He came from, he had dyslexia which hurt him in school on top of his young naive mind idolizing hardened gangsters and their lifestyle. And his relationship with his wife Karen is actually toxic. I hate how that word gets thrown around today, but this was genuinely toxic. He would hit and abuse her, his daughters were probably terrified of him, and yet Karen still stayed. It’s like you’re in to deep and you don’t know if you can get back out. It reminds me of Skylar and Walter White’s relationship from Breaking Bad post-Skylar finding out where she goes along with Walt’s plan and even buys the car wash to launder his money. But in the end she couldn’t take it after Agent/Uncle Hank’s death. I wonder if Karen had a similar revalation as well. There’s an excellent interview of the real Henry Hill and a video made by an ex-mobster who didn’t work with but knew Henry Hill. His name was Michael Franzese.
The Real Henry Hill
Uncensored Interview of Henry Hill
Michael Franzese on Goodfellas
And for a perspective on manhood and criminality and just storytelling in general check out A Convict's Perspective
Closing thoughts
This movie really shows the true nature of the mob and how young boys see the toughness and close-knit family dynamics of the organization and get dragged into a cycle of violence, abuse, anger, hate, and death or jail. And in today’s world with kids growing up with none or a shitty father, a lack of traditional masculine mentors, brotherhood, and camaraderie it’s no wonder crime is on the rise for so many young men who are enticed by the false masculinity and brotherhood of the criminal life.
Hope you enjoyed reading. God Bless and have a great day/night