1990 Classic Film Ranked Among 'Best Movies of All Time'
After The Godfather cemented the gangster genre as a box office powerhouse, audiences were eager for more. In 1990, Martin Scorsese delivered a fresh take with a new crime drama led by Hollywood heavyweights Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, and Lorraine Bracco.
Nicholas Pileggi's 1985 nonfiction book Wiseguy became the backdrop and inspiration for Scorsese's Goodfellas. The film has often been ranked as one of the greatest films ever made by Rotten Tomatoes, with the site calling it one of the highest points of the director's career.
Goodfellas takes place in 1955 in the heart of mafia presence in an Italian-American neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Teenager Henry Hill (Liotta) becomes enamored by the gangster lifestyle and begins to work for local caporegime Paulie Cicero and his associates Jimmy Conway (De Niro) and Tommy DeVito (Pesci). The film soon follows Henry's rise and fall in the gangster criminal world and how it affects his life and family well into the '80s.
Scorsese's film became a smashing success that rivaled The Godfather due to its take on raw, inner-perspective storytelling. While based on a real-life mob associate, it immersed audiences in the day-to-day reality instead of glamorizing the mob. It pulls viewers directly into Henry Hill's world in a way that feels almost personal and documentary-like with voiceover narrations. Goodfellas feels brutally honest, and it's exactly what Scorsese intended.
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Before the development of the film, Scorsese had no intentions of making another mob movie until reading Pileggi's book. He was always fascinated by the mob lifestyle and felt Pileggie's work was an honest portrayal. In the biography, Martin Scorsese: A Journey, the director explained, "The [Wiseguy] book gives you a sense of the day-to-day life, the tedium, how they work, how they take over certain nightclubs, and for what reasons. It shows how it's done."
Reports also claim that Scorsese cold-called Pileggi to tell him he had been waiting for the book his entire life, with the author responding that he had been waiting for the phone call his entire life. To secure financing for the film, it all came down to De Niro once he agreed to play the role of Jimmy. Many of the cast reported to have used Pileggi's excess research material to get into character, and ad-libbed popular scenes, with Liotta even going as far as listening to FBI tapes.
Goodfellas ended up becoming a staple of Hollywood cinema and the mobster genre. It's become a cult classic despite its box office run of $47.1 million against its $25 million budget. Critics applauded it as one of the "finer films" about organized crime.
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This story was originally published April 14, 2026 at 6:35 PM.