Goodfellas is considered one of Martin Scorsese’s finest films, and its brilliance is evident from its opening scene. The 1990 movie begins with a cold open - diving straight into a key scene before the title sequence is displayed. While Goodfellas’ cold open initially seems strange and imposing, its brilliance later becomes evident.
Goodfellas' opening scene features, but does not formally introduce, Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci), and Jimmy “The Gent” Conway (Robert De Niro). Concerned by a noise being made in their car, they pull over and open the trunk. The camera then cuts to a severely beaten man close to death before Tommy takes out a kitchen knife and stabs him repeatedly, and Jimmy shoots him several times.
This opening scene immediately injects Goodfellas with brutal and gruesome violence while also providing a glimpse of the different personalities of the three gangsters: Tommy’s erratic malignance, Jimmy’s composed efficiency, and Henry’s aloof attentiveness. Its brilliance is derived partially from how it gloomily undermines the following narration by Henry, “as far back as I can , I always wanted to be a gangster,” and the scenes of his hopeful, excited childhood that follow. But even more sinister is Goodfellas’ eventual revelation that the man in the trunk is Billy Batts, killed by Tommy over an insult rather than for any real reason or purpose.
In this way, the scene serves as a brutal awakening to any viewers expecting Goodfellas to showcase a glamorous perspective of gang life, as is often depicted in cinema - with the scene of Batts’ death quickly exposing it to be far worse. Goodfellas' opening scene is not simply the unattractive, dirty side of the job – it is, in fact, not part of the job at all. Batts’ death was not contracted or meaningful; it resulted from conflicting egos and toxic masculinity. Tommy holding a kitchen knife presents as bizarre at the beginning of the film, but it ultimately feels much more sinister when the film shows him picking up the blade from his mother’s house, where he intends to find a shovel for Batts’ burial.
Batts is a made man and therefore considered untouchable as part of the Gambino crew. The murder of Batts, which is a true story, is purely personal for Tommy, and it is conducted in the knowledge that it is breaking a code of the Mafia. The opening scene of Goodfellas is an imposing cold open, but it is even more sinister once the film contextualizes it. In this way, Goodfellas' opening scene is not the beginning of the film’s narrative, but it does turn out to be the beginning of the end for Tommy while acting as a layered cold open that only gets better with each subsequent viewing.
