Film: A "Gold Standard" gangster flick passes its Silver Anniversary

On this day in 1990, the Martin Scorsese-directed Mafia film Goodfellas, starring Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Lorraine Bracco and Joe Pesci, opens in theaters around the United States. The movie, which was based on the best-selling 1986 book Wiseguy, by the New York crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi, tells the true story of the mobster-turned-FBI informant Henry Hill (Liotta), from the 1950s to the 1980s. Goodfellas earned six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. Pesci won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance as the psychotic mobster Tommy DeVito.

Martin Scorsese, who was born on November 17, 1942, in New York City, received critical acclaim for one of his earliest films, Mean Streets (1973), which marked the first time he worked with Robert De Niro. The two men also collaborated on Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980) and The King of Comedy (1982). FollowingGoodfellas, in which De Niro played the Irish mobster Jimmy Conaway, the actor collaborated with Scorsese on Cape Fear (1991), which co-starred Nick Nolte and Jessica Lange, and Casino (1995), which was co-written by Pileggi and co-starred Pesci and Sharon Stone. Scorsese’s movie credits also include Gangs of New York(2002), The Aviator (2004) and The Departed (2006), which earned him his first Best Director Oscar after five previous nominations in the same category.

Prior to co-starring in Goodfellas, Ray Liotta, who was born on December 18, 1954, appeared in such films as Something Wild (1986), with Melanie Griffith and Jeff Daniels, and Field of Dreams (1989), with Kevin Costner. Liotta’s later credits include Cop Land (1997), with Sylvester Stallone, Hannibal (2001), with Anthony Hopkins, and Narc (2002).

Joe Pesci, who was born on February 9, 1943, appeared in such movies as Raging Bull, Once Upon a Time in America (1984) and Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) before his award-winning performance in Goodfellas. His later film credits include the blockbuster Home Alone (1990), in which he played a bumbling burglar; the comedy My Cousin Vinny (1992), with Marisa Tomei; and A Bronx Tale (1993), which marked Robert De Niro’s directorial debut.

Lorraine Bracco, who was born on October 2, 1954, earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her performance in Goodfellas as Henry Hill’s wife, Karen. Bracco, who began her career as a model, later appeared in such movies as Someone to Watch Over Me (1987), Radio Flyer (1992), The Basketball Diaries(1995), with Leonardo DiCaprio, and Riding in Cars with Boys (2001). She is perhaps best known for her role as Tony Soprano’s psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Melfi on the hit HBO series The Sopranos, which originally aired from 1999 to 2007.

[Brian], You Can Call Me Al: Pacino, De Palma reunite for "Retribution"

The duo responsible for two of the greatest cult classic films of all time (and in turn, two of the worst Latin accents of all time) is getting back together. 

Al Pacino and director Brian De Palma are said to be working together again on Retribution, according to Screen Daily. That would mark the first time they've teamed since 1993's Carlito's Way, which came 10 years after their first collaboration on Scarface. 

Retribution is reportedly the story of "a hitman and a cop who will go to any length to stop a Philadelphia child prostitution ring," and is said to be based on a Belgian film from 2003 titled The Memory Of A Killer. 

It looks like Pacino and De Palma have really been trying hard to find a project together. Earlier this year it was reported that Pacino would star in the De Palma directed Happy Valley about the late Penn State coach Joe Paterno, but that project was quietly shut down several months later. 

Get Lucky: All's Fair in Love and Crime

Thieves who steal from thieves. Love and romance - of a fashion - amongst the gritty London underworld. Car chases, boat chases, beat-ups, close calls and shodowns in abandoned lots. They're familiar calling cards but in this plucky, if somewhat demanding little thriller, they don't lose much for all their familiarity.

Lucky is a small time criminal and he's happy just getting by until he agrees to look after some counterfeit money for a friend who is in a bit of trouble with the law Two months go by without a word from him so Lucky burns the 'funny money' to avoid problems for himself. The resulting fire means a trip to the emergency room where he meets Bridget and his charm has her agreeing to go out with him. Their date goes well until the end when two hoods bundle him into the back of their car. It appea

rs that they had bought the 'funny money' from Lucky's friend and they want it back - all £150,000 or Lucky will end up like his friend. Lucky needs to score big so he teams up with an old mate who is planning a big casino heist with a couple of other gangsters who's day job is collecting protection money for 'Mr Big'. The are looking to earn a bit of money 'on the side'. The heist goes almost according to plan but with one small problem - there's minimal cash and the rest is in bonds. It all starts to go wrong immediately. A prostitute who they have hired steals the bonds and the getaway car is stolen. Worse is yet to come. The two gangsters have not done their homework and they've actually just robbed 'Mr Big's casino. Their only chance to avoid their boss's severe retribution is to get the stuff back.

Director Sacha Bennett works the script (by the accomplished TJ Ramini and Walter Taylaur) with appreciable gusto, and whilst the acting is decidedly uneven, diminutive lead Luke Treadway as Lucky and a several of the "bit players" stand out in their respective spaces in the plot.

If you're not that used to the dialogue, this film may take a second screening to get used to but, its worth it if you like fast-paced action, spiced with a little sex (including a humourous incident involving a prostitute and one of the robbers).

In other words, its the perfect candidate for Testosterone Theatre. Sit back and dig in.

Small Screen, Big Stories Pt II: From Boardwalk to (South) Beach via Renaissance Rome

Impossible as the above route may sound, it summarizes the continuing overachievement of cable TV as the new home of cinematic splendor, especially in the city-specific period crime drama. firstly, we anxiously await the coming of the fourth instalment in the Prohibition-era classic, Boardwalk Empire, with no less than Martin Scorcese and Mark Wahlberg as exec producers. Season 3 was the darkest, most layered yet, with several story lines unspooling and gathering narrative steam. Even more, the addition of the incomparable

Geoffrey Wright, as Harlem kingpin Dr Narcisse, is further

inducement, as if any were needed. Then, with elements of Boardwalk, Mad Men and the Godfather II comes the STARZ channel's  Magic City, set in late 50s Miami, with Fidel Castro still just a pesky but growing revolutionary and Cuba a model for Miami's vices.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan, of the TV series Grey's Anatomy and the Watchmen movie fame, stars as the owner of the Miramar Playa, a club where anything goes, and all manner of persons come for the booze, the girls and the drugs. All those things, of course, bring violence and intrigue.

In between those, the group billed as "The Original Crime Family" continues its machinations in 16th Century Rome. The peerless Jeremy Irons is well settled and still unsettling, as Pope Alexander VI, forging alliances, bringing down powers and fomenting war, mayhem and passion. Incidentally, the notes to the series say that the dynasty originated in Spain.

These three are just a sampling of the great original series on cable, but they feature here because of their subject matter and general format. Pick a period and a city, stock up on the refreshments and sit back to your cinema-quality narrative experience on the small screen.

"Police as Thieves": Assault on Precinct 13(2005)

A kind of "mid-voltage all-star cast" with the likes of Ethan Hawke, Gabriel Byrne, John Leguizamo, JA Rule, Bryan Dennehy and Laurence Fishburne playing various roles, this remake of the Kurt Russell-John Carpenter collaboration is not a game changer but it doesn't wear out its welcome.

Credit for that goes to the cast and to director Jean-Francois Richet (who would subsequently pilot Vincent Cassel to global superstardom as the gangster Mesrine. For a Parisian, he and his production crew do a pretty good job of presenting the post-Industrial gloom of Detroit on New Year's Eve, but one supposes that post-Industrial gloom is largely same wherever in the world one finds it.

For those unfamiliar with the original, Sgt Jake Roenick (Hawke) is the classic anti-hero cop; he took the rap for an undercover narcotics bust gone bad that resulted in the loss of a colleague and is now just marking time. Judgement is close at hand as the precinct office is set to be closed come Jan. 1, but "hell" arrives early in the form one Marcus Bishop, (Fishburne), the local crime boss, whose police transport is forced to stop at the unlucky-numbered precinct by persistently bad weather. said transport is also carrying a mini rogues' gallery of violent but petty criminals and one certifiable sociopath (Leguizamo, ultimately wasted), who are themselves none too happy about spending the night in company of Roenick and his fellow cops.

The ante is upped - violently - by a cabal of corrupt officers (led by Gabriel Byrne) who are intent on rubbing Bishop out in order to stop him from testifying and thus overturning their own cozy criminal empire. This new development forces an "unrighteous" but unavoidable alliance between jailers and the jailed as Roenick finds himself  again confronted by the things he has long sought to avoid: leadership and responsibility for the lives of others

Standard issue stuff, and truthfully, this remake does at time suffer from standard-issue and sub-standard dialogue. It makes up for it quite handsomely in the action and the characterizations, especially Hawke and Fishburne, who steadfastly take their characters out of the realm of cliche into solid believability. Hawke, who had something of a cop phase going(between this movie, "Training Day" and then "Brooklyn's Finest") has the audience (okay, me) rooting for and cussing him out with equal intensity, while Fishburne achieves a deft balance of pragmatism, pathos, poetics and sheer menace that one is almost sad to see him go (no spoiler intended; watch the end)

Whether or not you liked the original, this update (now itself seven years into history) is worth a look for its finely shaded but otherwise almost unrelenting darkness.