GoodFellas (HD-DVD)
Picture: B
Sound: B Extras: B Film: A-
Why has Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas remained the
standout Gangster genre film of 1990 when so many great such films like Phil
Joanou’s State Of Grace, The Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing,
Stephen Frears’ Scorsese-co-produced The Grifters, Peter Medak’s The
Krays and others received major release, attention and usually critical
praise? Joanou’s film is remarkable and Miller’s
is as great a film as The Coens will ever make.
The Grifters is as true Noir as you can get, even past Tarantino,
while The Krays anticipated the cycle of British Gangster hits like Snatch
and can hold its own against any film from that current cycle of Brit crime
actioners.
Front and foremost, it is energy. Scorsese is able through the screenplay he
authored with Nicholas Pileggi; based on Pileggi’s novel Wiseguys, not
just capture the violence, language, events and even implications of the crimes
involved. He once again goes a few steps
further by capturing the ethnic culture surrounding the events, the reasons why
this might be exciting or sexy and how once you get into this fastlane, it is
addicting enough to not want to stop no matter how likely you could get killed
in a flash is.
Ray Liotta is Henry Hill, who we join as a very young
pre-teen man. In the Kubrick tradition,
we join the character at the beginning of where their exceptional story will
take off and follows it to the end of the ride.
This also often means the end of individual freedom and real
living. For Hill, the ride was a long
and strangely glorious one. In an Old
Italian neighborhood, he (played by younger Christopher Serrone with a subdued
joy that he never gets enough credit for) quickly becomes the “good kid” local
Mafia guys decide to embrace and take in.
This does not sit well with his family, but his socio-economic class and
other fringe benefits outside of easy; dirty money eventually leads him to grow
into this new family.
Flash forward (literally, if you know the film well) to
his early adult period and he (Liotta) is hanging with Jimmy Conway (another
great, understated Robert DeNiro performance), Paul Cicero (Paul Sorvino) and
Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci in a performance so brilliantly dynamic that it still
is underappreciated nearly two decades later, even though he got the Oscar for
it!) in what will be an unbeatable “crew” like few in the annals of crime.
The FBI will be hot on their heels, but through lack of
technology, underestimation and other factors, they will go onto some crazy
crime misadventures that are as stark and disturbing as they are funny, turning
pretentious ideas of morality and appropriateness upside down. As each scheme happens, the stakes seems to
rise incrementally. The men also bond as
conflict and distrust grow around them.
In another great irony in the film, they become more successful as the
counterculture movement sets in, but it also brings new risks that leave them
more vulnerable in the long run.
However, their activities seem to almost forerun the Civil Rights
movements they get to take advantage of and as Italians, always get to walk a
strange line between prejudice, assimilation and respectability.
The result is a film so real it is palpable, so real it is
as if you took a time machine back to the time and with the swift-yet-rich pace
that remains totally coherent and well-rounded, moves along at a breathtaking
speed that is not just all movement and no substance. It is a living history untold and hidden
until this film brings light to it. Few
films are that good, but few filmmakers are as important or talented as
Scorsese. Few filmmakers have made as
many classics in the first 100+ years of cinema, but he has and GoodFellas
is one of them.
Be on the lookout for other great performances by Lorraine
Bracco as Henry’s girlfriend Karen Hill, Frank Vincent, Debi Mazar, Kevin
Corrigan, Michael Imperioli, Robbie Vinton as Bobby Vinton, Illeana Douglas,
Samuel L. Jackson, Vincent Gallo and even Scorsese’ parents!
The 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image is a
mixed bag, but any trouble is not from the new format’s hardware or software,
but from the strange transfer first seen in the standard DVD set recently
issued separately and in a Scorsese box from Warner. A popular title, it was a key widescreen 12”
LaserDisc and early DVD release, so it is no surprise Warner would make it one
of their first HD-DVDs. Though this
transfer is better than previous editions, there are issues with detail and
depth in many scenes, which was the case with the new DVD set. The transfer is just a bit odd in its limited
flatness and the same HD master looks like it was used for both.
The cinematography by the great (and longtime Scorsese
collaborator) Michael Ballhaus, A.S.C., is constantly amazing, creative, clever
and one of the great artistic achievements in the cinema as Scorsese digs into
Gangster genre history visually like no one ever had before. Think of the famous tracking shot into the
restaurant that Henry takes Karen to for special front seat privilege. With such detail, we still expect that later
HDTVs and HD-DVD players will yield better playback results despite an
indifferent transfer source, but some shots still shine with the impact
intended. Note the red early on glowing
on DeNiro, Pesci and Liotta from their care in the pre-credit sequence, a Video
Red not possible in standard DVD. When a
young Henry Hill blows up some cars and the film goes into a freeze frame, the
still shot is much better than anything since the 35mm print. Color is pretty good and editor Thelma
Schoonmacher’s (A.C.E.) work is amazing, but the lack of detail can get “filled
in” by the superior Video Black. We’ll
revisit this one and see if Warner does a Blu-ray version, which would make an
interesting further comparison.
The Dolby Digital-Plus 5.1 mix is a better version of
pretty much the same mix from the standard DVD in standard Dolby 5.1, but here,
you get back some of the richness and fullness first heard in the theatrical
analog Dolby SR (Spectral Recording) sound apparent too in the old widescreen
12” LaserDisc’s PCM 2.0 16bit/44.1kHz Stereo tracks with Pro Logic
surround. It was too bad the standard
DVD did not have DTS, but now with HD-DVD, Dolby Digital-Plus is around DTS
96/24 or so in quality depending on the mix and DTS HD promises to maybe be a
bit better. No matter what the format,
the use of classic Rock and Pop music is among the most masterful ever.
Those classics include Rags To Riches, Ain’t
That A Kick In The Head, Jump Into The Fire, Gimme Shelter,
Syd Vicious’ ironic version of My Way, George Harrison’s brilliant What
Is Life and Layla. In the
case of Layla, the Derek & The Dominoes classic recently was issued
in the SACD format (reviewed elsewhere on this site) in a 5.1 mix that blew
away how good it sounded in this film.
That SACD is reportedly going out of print, but Scorsese and Warner have
not gone back and worked in that version into the soundtrack of this film, nor
do they necessarily need to since it is a period piece. However, it draws out some of the sonic
limits of this film, but retains its character as intended.
Extras are the same as the recent DVD set, including the
original theatrical trailer, storyboard/film composition comparison, three
strong featurettes (Getting Made, Made Men: The Goodfellas Legacy,
The Workaday Gangster) and two outstanding audio commentary tracks. If it was not enough that the cast/crew track
has almost every major person in front of and behind the camera, a second
hilarious track reunites former rivals Edward McDonald and writer Hill. McDonald was the FBI agent on Hill’s case
figuratively and literally when the events of the film took place. Even if you have seen the film as many times
as this critic, watching it with this track is a revelation and brings out yet
another layer of this classic, for which the cable TV hit The Sopranos
would not be possible.
GoodFellas endures and with only a few
reservations, will go down as one of the key early HD-DVDs, even if the picture
has issues. For more on Scorsese,
especially on HD-DVD, try these links:
Casino (HD-DVD)
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/4796/Casino+(1995/HD-DVD)
The Departed (HD-DVD/DVD Combo
Format)
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5029/The+Departed+(HD-DVD/DVD+Combo+Format)
Martin Scorsese Collection (MGM)
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/1946/Scorsese+-+The+Martin+Scorsese+Film+Collection+(MGM)
- Nicholas Sheffo
