Those above will serve those down below

I’ve just been watching "Goodfellas", but in the end I gave up halfway through, because – quite honestly – it is a bad, bad movie. I just don’t get what people see in it and why they think it is so great.

 If you compare it to two other movies – The Departed and The Godfather – then it becomes (as unbelievable as it sounds) even more bad.

Based on what these three films portray, The Mafia is all about family. You are loyal, respectful and you do what you do because your family means everything.

The Godfather is good evidence of this. The Don does everything for his family, for his children.

Michael is left out in the cold because he puts his country before his family, but then he proves – beyond a shadow of a doubt – that he is willing to do everything to keep his father and his family safe, so he is allowed to rejoin the family, eventually rising to be the Head of it. ("It’s the Jesus story!").

Santino is slightly less of a good family man – cheating on his wife and all – but he never mistreats his wife (cheating aside) and is loyal to everyone else. And – from a certain point of view – his eventual fate could be seen as a judgement on his behaviour.

Fredo – there’s a whole bunch of issues to do with the middle of the Corleone sons – far too many to get in to at this point, but since he isn’t married, most of them aren’t really relevant. 

The only man who is really a bit of a tool is Carlo – he marries Connie and proceeds to beat her and abuse her a great deal. But he isn’t one of "The Family" and it is made clear to him on several points just how badly he is behaving. 

But – on the whole – the men are good family men, and (from what we see) they do not do their wives too much wrong, and those who do are punished for it.

The Departed focuses less on the romantic side of things, but still – you see the fact the men are loyal, and generally treat the women they are seeing pretty well. I can’t remember a single bit where they beat them up, abuse them or otherwise treat them badly. 

And while there is a lot of betrayal going on, the people doing the betrayal are loyal to the people who employ them (the police unit and the family).

Both films have a fair amount of violence in them, some of it pretty damn graphic. 

But none of it seems overly gratuitous. It doesn’t seem like it is there to attract people to the film, but because it is part of the story. 

Then you come to "Goodfellas".

Firstly – the main character smacks his wife around, points a gun at her, cheats on her and makes her utterly miserable. And yet he proclaims to believe that "Family" is everything. 

"Good. Because a man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man."

Second – there is a LOT of violence. And most of it just seems to be there for the sake of it.  In fact, it seems that if you don’t have the violence, the entire film would be pretty much pointless. The plot pretty much seems to exist to provide filler between the scenes of violence and death. 

It’s not that Larry Posner’s movies have gratuitous sex and gratuitous violence. It’s that they suck. They’re terrible. But people go to see them because they have gratuitous sex and gratuitous violence.

Now, I am aware that I am not the final word on what is a good film and what is a bad film. I am aware that not everyone shares my tastes, and that there are times I am wrong about things. 

(The first time I watched American Pie I thought it was brilliant, then when I watched it a second time I realised it was sketch comedy. In fact – it was a lot like Goodfellas in that respect. Rather than the plot driving the movie, it just seemed to exist to connect the sketches together). 

But on the general basis that movies need a) a good plot, b) good acting and c) a good script I think that Goodfellas fails….. actually, it fails on all three. 

The Departed passes on all three, and The Godfather excels. 

But Goodfellas – it’s just bad.