Goodfellas Goes West
The parallels between Martin Scorsese's classic mob tale and his latest film
Martin Scorsese has always been one of my favorite American film directors. From his early films, such as Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, to his more recent movies like The Wolf of Wall Street and The Irishman, I love the way Scorsese brilliantly portrays characters who are outlaws, whether they’re psychotic cab drivers, ruthless wall street stockbrokers, or members of the New York mafia.
This is especially true for one of Scorsese’s best known movies, Goodfellas, which is also one of my favorite films by the director.
Since Scorsese has always been fascinated by outlaws of all types, it’s not surprising that he always wanted to make a western. Now, Scorsese has achieved this goal with his most recent film, Killers of the Flower Moon, which is not only a western, but also a love story, a thriller, and a police procedural, all rolled into one movie.
(Warning: Spoilers Ahead)
Killers of the Flower Moon is about the reign of terror on members of the Native American Osage tribe in Oklahoma during the 1920s. When oil was discovered under Osage Nation land - previously thought to be worthless - the Osage people were murdered one by one until the FBI stepped in to solve the crimes. It’s based on the acclaimed 2017 non-fiction book with the same title by David Grann.
Martin Scorsese and writer Eric Roth both collaborated on the screenplay adaptation. Their original script was 200 pages long and, like the book, told the story from the viewpoint of the FBI agents who investigated the string of murders in the Osage nation during the 1920s.
But Scorsese wasn’t happy with this approach and didn’t know how solve the problem. Then actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who was originally cast as the lead FBI agent, Tom White, suggested changing the point of view to that of Ernest Burkhart, (the part DiCaprio took over), a World War I veteran who became entangled in the plot to obtain the mineral headrights (rights to the oil profits) by his uncle, William Hale, a successful cattle rancher and boss of the county.
Changing the focus of the story and the original book to Ernest, who eventually married an Osage woman named Mollie Kyle, (Lily Gladstone) allowed Scorsese and Roth to focus on the entire Osage nation community and its culture as part of their story.
While Scorsese and others believe this solved the problem of how to best present the tragedy, I think it has also created many parallels to one of Scorsese’s best films, Goodfellas, resulting in an epic that could be called “Goodfellas Goes West.”
First, the biggest similarity between Goodfellas and Killers of the Flower Moon is the script.
Even though both films are based on real people and events, I believe Scorsese and Roth have grafted the overall story and some of the main characters from Goodfellas onto the story and characters in Killers of the Flower Moon.
Thus, Goodfellas’ Jimmy Conway (played by DeNiro) becomes Killers’ Machiavellian mastermind, William Hale (also played by DeNiro); and Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill becomes DiCaprio’s not-as-bright counterpart, Ernest Burkhart. The third major character parallel should be Joe Pesci’s Tommy Devito, whose counterpart in Killers is Ernest’s brother, Byron (Scott Shepard).
However, Byron’s character is somewhat underwritten in the movie, even though he is instrumental in carrying out his Uncle’s plan, so it’s hard to know if he was as psychotic as his counterpoint, Joe Pesci’s Tommy, in Goodfellas.
The only major character in Killers without a parallel character in Goodfellas is Ernest’s wife, Mollie, who is far different than Lorraine Bracco’s Karen Hill, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Yet, I think the two characters are alike in the way they both depend on their husbands to take care of them and provide for their families. And, by the end of both films, both women have had their lives uprooted and changed forever by their husbands’ actions.
In addition to creating parallel characters between the two movies, both Goodfellas and Killers of the Flower Moon tell the same general story.
In Goodfellas, young Henry Hill becomes mentored by gangster Jimmy Conway, who also oversees the young man as Henry works his way up in the mafia. Henry learns the ropes and becomes part of Conway’s successful Lufthansa robbery, only to eventually fear that Conway wants to have both Henry and his wife Karen killed after FBI investigators begin closing in on the criminals involved in the heist. Henry eventually becomes an FBI informant in order to save his own life.
Similarly, in Killers of the Flower Moon, young Ernest Burkhart returns from fighting World War One and becomes mentored and employed by his Uncle, William Hale, the boss of the Osage Nation area. Ernest also learns the ropes and becomes an integral part of Hale’s scheme to kill off as many members of the Osage tribe as possible in order to get their mineral headrights (their share of the profits) to the oil on the land.
Just like Henry Hill, as things start to go wrong once the newly formed FBI sends investigators to the town to unravel the source of the Osage murders, Ernest begins to suspect that Hale not only wants to have his wife, Mollie, killed but Ernest himself as well. And like Henry Hill, Ernest also eventually becomes a government witness against his former mentor and uncle.
Another similarity between both films is the way murders are portrayed: they’re brutal and very graphic. This is especially true in specific scenes in Killers of the Flower Moon such as the flashback scene where we see the way Mollie’s sister Anna died and in the sequence involving Henry Roan’s murder.
Henry Roan’s murder and its aftermath are very similar to a sequence in Goodfellas. In Scorsese’s mafia tale, after Jimmy Conway brilliantly pulls off his plan to rob a large amount of currency flying into the Lufthansa cargo terminal at JFK airport, one of the crew, a black man named Stacks (played by Samuel Jackson in an early role) forgets to drive the van to a junkyard where it will be destroyed; instead, he leaves it parked in front of a fire hydrant at his girlfriend’s apartment. The police find the van two days later.
Consequently, Jimmy Conway orders Stacks killed and Tommy carries out the murder. However, Stacks’ mistake is what helps the police and FBI break the case and identify the thieves. Eventually, both Jimmy Conway and Henry Hill are arrested. In court, Henry Hill testifies against his former mentor, Jimmy Conway. Conway is eventually sentenced to a lengthy prison term and Henry Hill enters the witness protection program.
In Killers of the Flower Moon, William Hale orders the murder of Osage member, Henry Roan, (William Belleau), so Hale can falsely claim that he should inherit the mineral headrights to Roan’s share of the oil profits. Hale orders Ernest to do it or find someone else to pull it off. Ernest hires John Ramsey (Ty Mitchell) and tells him to shoot Henry in the front of the head so they can make his death look like a suicide. Instead, Ramsey shoots Henry in the back of the head. This mistake is one of the clues that will help the FBI identify and charge William Hale, Ernest Burkhart, John Ramsey (who actually killed Henry Roan) and others involved in the Osage murders.
After the FBI arrives in town, William Hale begins having the men involved in the murders of the Osage killed in order to hide the evidence of Hale’s own involvement. Once again, this is very similar to the sequence in Goodfellas where Jimmy Conway has almost all of the crew of the Luftshana heist murdered.
In Killers of the Flower Moon, the investigation ends in the arrest and trials of both William Hale and Ernest Burkhart, along with others who were involved. Ernest becomes a government witness and testifies against his uncle, William Hale. Yet, unlike Henry Hill in Goodfellas, Ernest is not given immunity or placed in a witness protection program. Instead, Ernest ends up with a lengthy prison sentence himself.
In closing, I think Martin Scorsese has either consciously or unconsciously structured and modeled Killers of the Flower Moon after his masterpiece, Goodfellas.
Even so, to me, Killers of the Flower Moon, despite its lengthy running time, remains an interesting and powerful film. It brings attention to one of the worst tragedies to befall Native Americans after the settlement of the west. It is also well-directed and contains many outstanding performances - especially by Robert DeNiro, Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, and the other Native American actors in the cast.
But in my opinion, it’s still not as great as Goodfellas.
I thought Killers was his best late career work we've gotten, post The Departed, where I feel he was actually starting to make the movies he wanted to make. It was my favourite film of that year. All the same Oscars for Opp to Killers. I like this comparison. I might have been more inclined to talk about Kundun though.
You picked a favorite filmmaker of mine. Really love your article and the parallels between Goodfellas and Killers of the Flower Moon.