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Originally Posted by demonrail666

Sure but in those earlier film, the unravelling comes as the result of an individual psychosis or as a direct result of their gangster activities. What Scorsese emphasises is people unravelling due to the lifestyles that come with that activity. Not that the lifestyle wasn't a factor in those earlier films, but it took Scorsese to really put it at the centre of the genre, starting with Mean Streets (to a degree), perfected by Goodfellas/Casino and perhaps taken a little too far with Wolf (Goodfellas with calculators),

or in other words, I agree with Severian.

i don't know many stories in western literature where "evil" doesn't get its "comeuppance" one way or another. failure through excess is nothing new. look at michael corleonne-- wants to do good, get caught up in a lifestyle, everything goes to shit. look at barry lyndon-- destroyed by "making it" where he doesn't belong. look at the life of napoleon. or alexander the great, legendarily killed by his excesses. julius caesar, triumphant & stabbed. look at the history of rome, glory & decadence. look at the great gatsby. etc. x 1000. even bruce lee was killed ultimately by lifting too much weight (broken disc --> medication --> pow) . goodfellas after all is based in a real life story. this shit happens all the time. it just doesn't happen with such great style as in goodfellas. style is the key.

goodfellas is of course a masterpiece of the gangster genre. i love that movie-- fantastically written and acted and shot and edited and a great soundtrack. it's been countlessly ripped off and it has set the standard for the gangster genre afterwards, from tarantino to the sopranos. but we cant' reduce everything to it in spite of its influence. it's kind of like saying everything is a version of the bible, or the greek myths, or don quijote (the modern novel was invented by cervantes so i guess every novel written after is don quijote?)

regardless of how good or how many times goodfellas has been copied since the 90s, my beef is not with goodfellas but with the notion that american hustle is some kind of "goodfellas lite" (i've seen that repeatedly on the internet so i don't blame this thread for that blunder). sure, it has things in common. it's a gangster period piece with a great soundtrack, and it's also based on a real-life case and a criminal's memoirs. so on the surface one could say "hm, yeah". and it has a similar narrative convention of multiple points of view (like doestoevski, or eisenstein). so one coud say it follows in the gangster genre after the genre was transformed by goodfellas-- fair enough. but it's an altogether different story, with different intentions and a different characters and emotional content. raskolnikov is not sancho-dark. american hustle is not goodfellas-lite. goofellas is not a degenerate-battleship-potemkin or an urban great train robbery.

SPOILER SPOILERS-- sorry to give away the surprise punchline but in american hustle they do get away with their crimes by actually committing more crimes (ripping off the fbi and fucking over the agent that trapped them). in spite of the massive mindfuck and all appearances to the contrary the main characters are actually not betraying each other, but helping each other out as much as they can while under pressure from the cops. sure, you don't find this out until the end, which is a bit unfair, but this happes like that. there is also no antrhopological angle here where we see mafia traditions and rituals. and they do not succumb in an orgy of darkness. in spite of the scares, there are no actual massacres or bodies in trunks. and the movie is ultimately not a tragedy, but a comedy-- a farce, even. "i fought the law and i won." the law here is not the invincible nemesis cavalry with helicopters but a bunch of incompetent bureucrats with petty/greedy agendas that can be played. goodfellas had great funny moments, but it has more dead bodies than a shakespeare tragedy and it has a sad end. in american hustle, if you're willing to entertain this cheesy formula, "love triumphs against all obstacles". it's not about "comeuppance". thematically, it's actually much more closely related to david o russell's own "three kings." just in different drag. END END SPOILERS.

so i find the comparison to scorsese a reductionist and cheap dismissal. i understand if people don't like the movie-- it's unhinged and at times goofy, and some people don't like unhinged or goofy. i do. don't put metal in the science oven.

Originally Posted by evollove

Play a mind game, and imagine a world where Goodfellas was never made. Casino is suddenly a groundbreaking masterpiece, no?

i probably would have liked it a lot more, but at the time it came across like a broken record. for me it was "uffffff, here he goes again..." i wish he had given the gangsters a break for a while. but also it doesn't have the same insane energy so it feels like a hangover when you compare it to the high that is goodfellas, even if he recycles the rolling stones for it.