Goodfellas

I love Goodfellas, it's one of my favorite movies. There is a theme that occurs in this film, and in all gangster films really, and that is the idea of loyalty. It's a rather interesting thing. All gangsters insist on loyalty among their groups, especially when it comes to talking to the police. They have a strict no snitching policy, and if you break the policy they kill you. The strange thing is that I don't really feel that loyalty exists between gangsters in the first place. For example, when Ray Liotta's character is busted, he is questioned about Robert De Niro's character extensively. At first he refused to turn him in, that is until De Niro tries to have him killed. Now where is the loyalty there? Jimmy has so little faith in Henry that he flat out decides to kill him before he even knows if he is going to rat. Somewhat ironically when Henry realizes what Jimmy is planning on doing, he decides to rat him out to the cops in order to save his own skin. If these two characters actually had loyalty towards each other, or really if Jimmy just had loyalty to Henry, Jimmy wouldn't be in jail. But instead he decides it would be safer to just try and off Henry and call it a day.