The Departed is a terrific movie, but it really doesn't feel as personal as his other crime films. Goodfellas is easily the most entertaining one, but all of them are, in the end, pretty sad movies about lost friends and ruined lives. He starts out so wild and edgy with Mean Streets, and ends up so serene and refined with The Irishman. Casino is a very good movie, you could argue that it is a great movie. It is a two-and a half hour long epic that moves at breakneck speed and every frame gushes with urgency. Goodfellas, its narrative spanning three decades, never slows down-not at all. And they all have DeNiro, Scorsese's most iconic collaborator, which adds a layer of meta-ness to the theme of friendship through the ages.Īlso, personally speaking, I think watching those movies in sequence really shows how he has improved as a filmmaker over the years. Goodfellas came first, that's why, and in my opinion it is Martin Scorsese's magnum opus. If there is a unifying theme that I see, it's maybe 'toxic friendship'. With the exception of The Departed, his crime movies seem to have lead characters whose age at the end of the film roughly corresponds with Scorsese's age when he made it: I don't know if they really qualify is a coherent series of films.īut I do think it's that it's a really fascinating way to track the evolution of Scorsese as a filmmaker, and a human being, by watching his crime movies.
