Paul Cicero's cigar is magic, it disappears in between shots (the scene at 25 minutes-ish). That's one of a few truly glaring continuity errors in this film. (IMDB lists a remarkable number of "Goofs", but most of them are so small you'd have to really be looking for them. Not so with the cigar—that one practically slaps the viewer in the face and says, "Hi! Just wanted to remind you that this is a film.")

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Having just finished the film, my foremost thought is that Henry's parents kind of disappeared. They were important at the beginning, and then suddenly they vanished from the narrative when it was convenient. Bit disappointing—not that there weren't enough characters to keep track of as the story continued.

The other thing on my mind, a bigger-picture thought, is that the movie feels both long and slow, _and_ quick, somehow. At roughly the one-hour mark I was surprised how much time had gone by. But that's where it began to feel like it slowed down, too. The remaining 60% or so of the film increasingly dragged on until the last 20 minutes. A lot of it had to do with the sheer number of times Tommy was shown to be [spoiler]a careless, hot-headed asshole with a gun[/spoiler]. Most of those scenes didn't add anything new to his character.

_GoodFellas_ is an impressive piece of cinema, but at times it gets bogged down in atmosphere for atmosphere's sake, needlessly extending the run time without contributing to the film (whose world is already quite well defined even without those scenes). If the whole film was as engrossing as the first hour, it truly would be a masterpiece. **8/10**