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• 1080p High Definition

• Getting Made Documentary

• Audio Commentary with Martin Scorsese

• Made Men: The Goodfellas Legacy Documentary 

• Interactive Menus

• The Workaday Gangster Documentary

Special Feature Rating:

GoodFellas features Robert de Niro as Irish-American gangster Jimmy "the Gent" Conway and Joe Pesci as the hotheaded Tommy DeVito who seems to operate at the whim of various psychopathic disorders. DeVito is the pointman for the film's most visceral violence as well as it's punchiest humor. And Scorcese is a master of playing off one against the other. Watch the legendary "what's so funny about me" scene, which uses a humorous anecdote to launch into a tension-building dialogue that resolves in comic relief only to erupt moments later in brutality. "I'm beginning to wonder about you, Henry. You might break under questioning," DeVito jokes during the scene in a classic moment, foreshadowing the plot twists later.

With legendary costars to support him, Liotta's portrayal of Hill is the least accessible of the main characters. His narration is somewhat unconvincing, as his voiceover sometimes sounds more like a California pseudointellectual than a Brooklyn gangster. De Niro and Pesci are far more convincing in their roles and the way they deliver their characters' emotion and intrigue catapults them into magical presence in the film. They are both more exciting to watch than Liotta's Henry Hill. Still, the dynamics of the characters are easy to accept and Liotta's performance and narration are strong enough to make the film work very well.

Story Rating:

The Blu-Ray disc features a VC-1 codec and 1080p that, while not reference quality and still a bit dark, is an absolute revelation. I was mesmerized by the detail in faces, fabrics and set design that was all but invisible in previous versions.

Throughout the film, black level and contrast ratio are excellent. What strikes me most, though, is the detail and lifelike color that is unmarred by smearing or stepping. Previous versions look like bad notch filters are used. Now that is replaced with a film-like clarity with small grain and excellent depth. As mentioned earlier, the overall tone may be a tad dark, but I suspect the source material would show a similar color balance. The overall effect of the 1080p Blu-ray presentation is to fully update the look of GoodFellas, bringing it into the 21st century and the age of high definition video.

Picture Rating:

One of the signatures of GoodFellas is its soundtrack, which features many well-known hits, spanning the '50s through the '80s. It is heavily weighted toward the earlier recordings, with such classics as Rags to Riches (Tony Bennett), Sincerely (The Moonglows), Speedo (The Cadillacs), Life Is But a Dream (The Harptones) and Beyond the Sea (Bobby Darin). The stereophonics is good, but the music lacks adequate "wow-factor" resolution, making it sufficient for background. When the music comes more to the foreground, however, on later tracks like Sunshine of Your Love (Cream) and Layla (Derek and the Dominos), it is missing the additional musical information that lossless PCM can provide. Still, the DD track's ability to resolve such sounds as squealing tires, gunshots and car engines is quite impressive. 

Sound Rating:

Overall Rating:

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