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Great read. Interesting that you point to ‘Goodfellas’ glamorizing the gangster lifestyle and Scorsese certainly does that with his incredible box-of-tricks cinematic style. However, Scorsese clearly shows the darker paranoid side of the life when it all falls apart as the rats turn on each other when faced with extinction. The ultimate punishment for Henry Hill at the end is he’s alive but having to live his life like an ordinary ‘Joe’ and you get the sense he does suffer a comeuppance of sorts.
Thanks for reading. Yeah paranoia tends to sink in after the initial glamorisation. It’s always seen as attractive from the outside, especially when Henry is young, and Scorsese is great at drawing the audience in too, as you say. There’s always consequences, whether it’s Tony Montana being shot to bits in Scarface or Henry Hill being forced to live the rest of his life in constant fear as a ‘normal’ guy.