Goodfellas is a 1990 film about the Mafia directed by Martin Scorsese. It is based on the novel Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, which is itself based on a true story. The film stars Robert De Niro as Jimmy Conway, Ray Liotta as Henry Hill, Lorraine Bracco as Hill's wife, Karen Hill, and Joe Pesci, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the irascible Tommy DeVito (based on Tommy DeSimone).

In the film, Henry Hill, played by Ray Liotta, becomes involved in the mafia at a young age: as he says in the film, "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster."

As a boy, Henry idolized the Lucchese crime family gangsters in his blue-collar New York City neighborhood, and in 1955 quit school and went to work for them at a local cab stand, much to the dismay of his working-class parents. The local Lucchese mob captain, Paul Cicero (Paul Sorvino), (based on the actual Lucchese mobster Paul Vario) and Cicero's associate Jimmy Conway (De Niro), help cultivate the boy's developing criminal career. When Henry is arrested for selling stolen cigarettes, he wisely tells the police nothing and is lauded by his superiors for "being a standup guy."

As an adult, Henry and his friend Tommy DeVito (Pesci) conspire along with Conway to steal much of the billions of dollars in cargo passing through Idlewild Airport (later JFK). They help out in a key moneymaking heist, in 1967 stealing over half a million dollars from the Air France cargo terminal paying Cicero his percentage of the take as per the mafia's code of tribute.
Henry also meets and falls in love with Karen (Bracco), although there is conflict between families since Karen's parents are prosperous and Jewish and Hill is himself poor and half-Irish and half-Italian. (Because of his and Jimmy Conway's own Irish ancestry, they can never be actual "made men" – full members of an Italian crime family.) When Karen learns firsthand about what Henry actually does for a living, she is fascinated instead of repelled; it impresses her that Henry has the nerve to steal instead of just "sitting around, waiting for a handout."

As the years go by and Henry earns Cicero's trust, his compadres become more daring (and therefore dangerous)--Conway's excessive love of truck hijacking and grand theft is bad enough, but DeVito is nearly psychotic in his need to prove himself through violence. In one of the film's most controversial scenes, DeVito thoughtlessly shoots an innocent and unarmed young man (played by Michael Imperioli), first in the foot for not bringing him his drinks fast enough, and then fatally for talking back to him.

DeVito's violent streak reaches a crest in June 1970 when he bludgeons to death one Billy Batts (Frank Vincent), a "made man" in the competing Gambino crime family, a major offense that could get them all killed by the Gambinos if discovered. Henry, Conway and DeVito place Batts's bloody corpse in the trunk of their car, stop by DeVito's mother's house to pick up a shovel and a knife, finish killing Batts upstate, bury him in an abandoned plot of rural land – and then discover six months later that the land has been sold to a real estate developer and the (badly decomposed) body has to be re-excavated, moved and reburied. (This scene serves as an example of the movie's black humor; Tommy and Henry go to dig up the body, a scene shot in sillouette; while Henry reacts badly to the excavation of the corpse, eventually vomiting, both Jimmy and Tommy remain nonchalant, the exhumation is just business to them). During this time, Henry's marriage deteriorates when Karen finds he has a mistress; Karen threatens the other woman so violently that even Cicero has to mediate.

After beating up a debt-ridden Florida gambler whose sister works as an FBI typist, Henry and Jimmy are caught and sent to prison for four years. There, Henry deals drugs to keep afloat, and by the time he returns to his family he has a lucrative drug connection in Pittsburgh, one which he had established while still in prison. Although Paul Cicero tolerated Henry's prison drug deals, he has sternly warned him not to deal drugs on the outside and to inform him of those who do, but Henry ignores Paul and gets Tommy and Jimmy (as well as his wife, and new mistress (Debi Mazar), and babysitter) involved in an elaborate smuggling operation. At the same time, in December 1978, Jimmy Conway and friends plan and carry out a record six million dollar heist from the Lufthansa cargo terminal at JFK airport, but Jimmy soon grows disgusted and paranoid when his associates foolishly flaunt their gains in plain sight, threatening to draw police attention, and begins having them gradually eliminated. Worse, after promising to welcome DeVito into the Lucchese family as a "made man," the elder members of the family instead kill him as retaliation for Batts' death. Henry reports that "DeVito is shot in the face so his mother couldn't have an open coffin funeral."

In an extended, virtuoso sequence named "Sunday, May 11th, 1980," all of the different paths of Henry's complicated criminal career catastrophically collide. He must coordinate a major cocaine shipment, cook a meal for his wife, children and paraplegic younger brother, placate his drug-addled, emotionally unstable mistress, cope with his clueless, superstitious babysitter/drug courier, avoid federal authorities who, unknown to him, have had him under surveillance for several months, and satisfy his sleazy customers, all the while a nervous wreck from getting too little sleep and snorting too much cocaine. The editing and scoring of the sequence have been acclaimed as some of Scorsese's best work, with a montage of popular songs such as The Who's "Magic Bus" and Harry Nilsson's "Jump Into the Fire" forming the soundtrack. (The rest of the film also uses the same sort of scoring strategy, where the music provides not only an emotional backdrop but a sense of historical context.)

After Henry's drug arrest, Cicero abandons him, and the rest of his mob cohorts fast follow suit. Convinced he and his family are marked for death, Henry acts swiftly and decisively, spilling the beans on his former criminal cohorts to the FBI, sending them away for long prison terms. He and his family enter the federal Witness Protection Program, disappearing into anonymity to save their lives.

He is now an "average nobody"; as he laments in the film's closing lines, "I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook."

Wikipedia : Goodfellas

The Godfather is a film adaptation of the novel of the same name written by Mario Puzo, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Marlon Brando and Al Pacino. The film's story spans ten years from late 1945 to 1955.

This movie is regarded by many as being the definitive Mafia film. It is consistently ranked amongst the finest movies of all time and has repeatedly been voted as the number one greatest movie ever made, according to the Internet Movie Database Top 250 Movies of All Time.








::::::: Main characters and plot :::::::

The film begins at the wedding of Don Vito Corleone's (Marlon Brando) daughter, Connie, to Carlo Rizzi. According to tradition, no Sicilian can refuse a request on his daughter's wedding day, so the Don is meeting people and granting various favors. One of the favors is asked by Johnny Fontane, a crooner who wants Corleone's influence to break into the movie business, more specifically, with a movie he'd be perfect in, but can't land the lead role as it is being produced by Jack Woltz, with whom Johnny had a falling-out in the past.

After Don Corleone tells Johnny to rest and let him take care of everything, he reassures him by saying that he's "gonna make him an offer he can't refuse." The family consigliere Tom Hagen (Duvall) "persuades" Woltz to cast Fontane in the movie by leaving the head of the producer's prize racehorse (named Khartoum) in his bed.
Meanwhile, Don Corleone's younger son Michael (Al Pacino) has returned from service in World War II. While Vito Corleone is receiving requests on his daughter's wedding day, Michael is telling his girlfriend Kay about the kinds of things his father does. He tells her, "That's my family, Kay. It's not me."

After the wedding and the famous scene with the horse's head, narcotics man Virgil "The Turk" Sollozzo asks Don Corleone for his help in selling narcotics. Don Corleone refuses, though his oldest son (Santino, or "Sonny") expresses interest in the deal. Luca Brasi, Don Corleone's unfailingly loyal bodyguard, is sent to obtain information from Sollozzo's apparent backers, the Tattaglia family, who kill him as part of a previous plan to get to Don Corleone.

Because Don Corleone is opposed but his eldest son (next in line to run the family business) favors the narcotics deal, Sollozzo and company attempt (almost successfully) to assassinate Don Corleone. In response to the crisis, Michael (previously uninvolved in the family business) volunteers to kill Sollozzo and his bodyguard, the corrupt police captain McClusky, during a meeting to end the conflict regarding Sollozzo's business proposal. After shooting them both in a Bronx restaurant, Michael flees to Sicily to avoid attention. There, he meets and marries Apollonia, who is later murdered by a duplicitous bodyguard's car bomb meant for Michael. Back in America, Don Corleone returns home from the hospital and is heartbroken to learn that Michael was the one who killed Solozzo and McClusky.

In New York, the temperamental Sonny (James Caan) prepares to deal with Carlo, who is abusing his wife (Sonny's sister Connie). Sonny is set up and murdered. Instead of perpetuating the revenge cycle, Don Corleone (now more or less recovered from the assassination attempt) seeks peace with the warring Five Families so his youngest son can return home. Don Corleone realizes that it was Don Barzini, not Philip Tattaglia, who was behind most of the war and Sonny's death. Michael returns from Sicily and marries former girlfriend Kay (Diane Keaton).

The ailing Don Corleone places Michael in charge of the Family, since the next oldest brother Fredo is the weakest and least intelligent of the brothers. While advising Michael about important details such as how his enemies will attempt to come after him, Vito Corleone reveals that he had hoped his youngest son wouldn't have to work in the family business. He had hoped Michael would one day be "the one pulling the strings...Governor Corleone or Senator Corleone," but unfortunately things didn't work out that way. Michael has plans to leave behind the family's cover (olive oil importing) and "go legit" in the Las Vegas casino business. His offers to buy out casino owner Moe Greene (based partly on Bugsy Siegel) are rebuffed. While playing with his grandson, Don Corleone dies from a heart attack.

During the funeral, Corleone family underboss Sal Tessio conveys a proposal for a meeting with Don Barzini, on Tessio's turf so Michael will be safe. As Vito Corleone told him and Tom Hagen confirms at the funeral, such an offer through a trusted acquaintance is how Michael's enemies will attempt to dispose of him once Vito Corleone and his important political connections are gone. Michael then arranges for the murders of the heads of the other families, Moe Greene, and Tessio (for betraying Michael to Don Barzini)--all while Michael is at the baptism of his nephew, Connie and Carlo's son. The film's climactic scene involves intercutting between the brutal assassinations and the church, as Michael recites the traditional vows of baptism. In one of the most memorable scenes, Moe Greene is shot clean through the eye. He then has Carlo killed (Clemenza strangles him with a garrote) for helping to arrange the murder of Sonny. After seeing Connie hysterical over the murder of her husband, Kay questions Michael who reassures her by denying he ordered the hit on Carlo.

The movie ends as Kay steps out of the room to get a drink following Michael's reassurances, while in the background high-ups under Vito Corleone pay their respects to Michael, addressing him as Don Corleone.

Wikipedia : The Godfather

::::::: The Godfather: The Game (Electronic Arts 2006) :::::::

Google Video - The Godfather: The Game

The Godfather: The Game is a video game based on Mario Puzo's novel and the 1972 film of the same name.