Greatest Gangster Movies Ever
Discussion
Beardy10 said:
OllieC said:
donnie brasco, for being more low key
My sister worked on Donnie Brasco....the real Donnie Brasco was an adviser on the film. The film is an awful lot more low key than it was in real life...I know little about the period and even less about the real chap, but it just seemed more convincing as a story and the characters etc than many of the other films mentioned in the thread.
Mind you, most of the films so far are among my favourites so...
Slade Alive said:
Goodfellas not a true portrayal of events and circumstances which actually happened as a whole. Film simply based on non fiction book written about three gangsters. Most of the script improvised. Some events happened. Some didn't. Very entertaining as it was, I enjoyed it immensely. Several times in fact. Likely will again too. Scorsese's a great director.
I don't really get your point here. You say Goodfellas is not a true portrayal of events & circumstances, but what film is? Every film based on true events is just that, based, surely if they were totally factual then they'd be documentaries & not films. I can't think of one film that is totally fact & without any embellishment at all. Goodfellas was based on true events the same way as Pearl harbour(truly awful film) or saving private Ryan. Hollywood has never done factual at all well, but out of all the based on true events films they have made Goodfellas & Casino are probably two of the more accurate ones, although obviously embellished with some fact taken out & some fiction put in, otherwise they wouldn't be viewable & after all they are made for financial reasons, to make a profit & not to be history lessons.
My point was, some here found Once Upon A Time dull.
Perhaps because it covered four hours of fiction portraying a subculture of life through four decades which intertwined love, hate, money, power, politics, corruption etc etc, it wasn't entertaining enough in the sense it were not action packed. But it's intention as a piece of cinematographic history was to show how life through those forty years or so had many different facets. Say from street bum to state senator, young girl dancing showing her petticoat for a dime to successful stage performer as two examples shown. Non of it were true yet its social statement was very powerful to the point it could have been true.
On the other hand Goodfellas was a somewhat broad adaptation of a book based on the telling of three New York gangsters. Some stories were true, to an extent, and their ultimate outcome, witness protection program and jail time factual. The plot concentrated entirely on taking the audience on a roller coaster ride from start to finish without much regard for factual necessity. Done so by intertwining fictitious glamorised events for the most never happened or based loosely on stories told by the three gangsters in the book, which might or might not have been told to them by other mobsters and possibly their events.
Amongst the films many awards it sits somewhere officially as a historical cinematographic document - which seems to me to contradict the point made by Once Upon A Time which was entirely ficticious but told the tale less gratuitously and without the need to captivate the audience the way Scorsese did with Goodfellas being a bit of a shoot 'em up with lots of use of the word f
k, which I thought was great by the way.
Perhaps because it covered four hours of fiction portraying a subculture of life through four decades which intertwined love, hate, money, power, politics, corruption etc etc, it wasn't entertaining enough in the sense it were not action packed. But it's intention as a piece of cinematographic history was to show how life through those forty years or so had many different facets. Say from street bum to state senator, young girl dancing showing her petticoat for a dime to successful stage performer as two examples shown. Non of it were true yet its social statement was very powerful to the point it could have been true.
On the other hand Goodfellas was a somewhat broad adaptation of a book based on the telling of three New York gangsters. Some stories were true, to an extent, and their ultimate outcome, witness protection program and jail time factual. The plot concentrated entirely on taking the audience on a roller coaster ride from start to finish without much regard for factual necessity. Done so by intertwining fictitious glamorised events for the most never happened or based loosely on stories told by the three gangsters in the book, which might or might not have been told to them by other mobsters and possibly their events.
Amongst the films many awards it sits somewhere officially as a historical cinematographic document - which seems to me to contradict the point made by Once Upon A Time which was entirely ficticious but told the tale less gratuitously and without the need to captivate the audience the way Scorsese did with Goodfellas being a bit of a shoot 'em up with lots of use of the word f
k, which I thought was great by the way. Edited by Slade Alive on Monday 21st March 12:25
Man from UNCLE said:
I don't really get your point here. You say Goodfellas is not a true portrayal of events & circumstances, but what film is? Every film based on true events is just that, based, surely if they were totally factual then they'd be documentaries & not films. I can't think of one film that is totally fact & without any embellishment at all.
Goodfellas was based on true events the same way as Pearl harbour(truly awful film) or saving private Ryan. Hollywood has never done factual at all well, but out of all the based on true events films they have made Goodfellas & Casino are probably two of the more accurate ones, although obviously embellished with some fact taken out & some fiction put in, otherwise they wouldn't be viewable & after all they are made for financial reasons, to make a profit & not to be history lessons.
I've read the book that Goodfellas is based on (Wiseguy, Nicholas Pileggi) and thought it remarkable just how closely the film stuck to it. It seems a strange one to pick out for not being factual. Goodfellas was based on true events the same way as Pearl harbour(truly awful film) or saving private Ryan. Hollywood has never done factual at all well, but out of all the based on true events films they have made Goodfellas & Casino are probably two of the more accurate ones, although obviously embellished with some fact taken out & some fiction put in, otherwise they wouldn't be viewable & after all they are made for financial reasons, to make a profit & not to be history lessons.
Man-At-Arms said:
The Untouchables
tigerkoi said:
State Of Grace
Miller's Crossing
The Long Good Friday
The Public Enemy
King Of New York
Bugsy
Isn't 'The Untouchables' more a film about the G-Men, prohibition and all with more of a Crime/Thriller bent.Miller's Crossing
The Long Good Friday
The Public Enemy
King Of New York
Bugsy
Love the film, but for instance with my selection above, they portray the stories of 'gangsters' and the story from their side or through their eyes. With a few excellent supporting actor scenes from the likes of De Niro and others, fictionalising the real Nitti and Capone, is 'The Untouchables' really a 'gangster' film, or actually one that has gangsters as incident to the overall story?
Looked at in another way, pretty much all films could then be classified as romance, as nine times out of ten there's always some love element in there. Classification can be mildly contentious.
OllieC said:
Beardy10 said:
OllieC said:
donnie brasco, for being more low key
My sister worked on Donnie Brasco....the real Donnie Brasco was an adviser on the film. The film is an awful lot more low key than it was in real life...I know little about the period and even less about the real chap, but it just seemed more convincing as a story and the characters etc than many of the other films mentioned in the thread.
Mind you, most of the films so far are among my favourites so...
Pesty said:
carmonk said:
Is 'The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover' a gangster film? It's partly about a group of gangsters so it maybe half qualifies. Amazing film, anyway.
yeah I recon it does count.Awsome film is it wrong that i still would given how old she was in that?
I'd be tempted now...Edit: just realised I lent my copy out years ago and never got it back, so just bought it again off Amazon - £2 + £1.30pp, not bad!
Edited by carmonk on Monday 21st March 21:26
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