"I'm funny how? Funny like a clown?"
I've noticed after watching these movies its started to make me understand cultural references that have been lost on me in the past. The "You think I'm funny?" line has definitely been referenced somewhere before. I also finally understand the whole "The first rule of fight club" thing too.
This film is really good. It's a really similar style to "Casino", in that there is a lot of narration and the story moves very quickly, but for some reason I liked "Goodfellas" a whole lot more and I think there are several reasons for this.
I reckon "Casino" was an attempt at copying the "magic" that "Goodfellas" had. It had a lot of the same actors and was done by the same director in the same style. But I reckon this formula hardly ever works. It is difficult to re-create something because at the time it was innovative and the recreation is inevitably going to be unoriginal.
Also, "Goodfellas" follows a boy from a very young age, and takes you through his life, showing you how he became a gangster, meeting people along the way, whereas "Casino" just drops you in the middle of a bunch of characters. I feel that this allows you to sympathise with the lead character a lot more and understand his point of view because you've literally seen it from his perspective.
The whole organisation of these gangster/mafia movies is quite an interesting concept. Essentially They take whatever they want - which is why they have so much money. They use that money to gain the loyalty of other people, so that when someone tries to stop them, they just threaten that person with guns and numbers. Or if the person really pisses them off, they'll just kill them. The whole operation is highly organised and probably just as tiresome as getting a real job. But they don't do it for an easy life, they do it because its all they know, as we see from the perspective of Henry Hill, the lead character.
A good film.
