That same lanky glass-housed rock thrower, though, audibly admitted during my wife's favorite scene, the one where Hill beats the piss out of some cocky rich-boy molester (who the lanky fucker certainly bore more similarity to than he did to Henry Hill) with the butt of a revolver to defend the honor of his newly minted girlfriend, homeboy audibly admitted that, yes, that was pretty awesome.
The man just died today, at 69, 32 years later than he should have if he'd kept to the old Mafia code of Omerta, the unbreakable vows of silence towards any bastards outside the "cosa nostra" or "this thing of ours." In many ways he's not only a very real part of the downfall of the mafia but certainly also a symbol of its collapse at the arrival of drugs, when relatively harmless trades such as prostitution, bootlegging, betting and occasional inside job robberies were replaced by demonized vices like heroin and cocaine and put the Mafia squarely into the sights of America's war on drugs.
But it's a tough situation, Henry Hill, and the thing Scorcese does so damn well in the movie is showing the ambiguity of the life. You're a kid and you see people flashing wads of hundreds, you walk into the hottest joint in town through the kitchen and have a table put down in front of the band for you and your date.All you gotta do is run some errands for classy gentlemen who wear fedoras and snazzy suits and sit on street corners in Little Italy eating cannolis. Sometimes that involves blowing up cars which, let's be honest, all boys want to do at some time anyway, much less get paid hundreds for it. Then you move on to committing robberies so carefully orchestrated with the people you're robbing that it's more like a hand-off than a theft. All along you have more money, cachet, and power than most people double and triple your age, regardless of whether they grew up in the Bronx or Midtown. By the time you start hearing about and seeing murders, you're in too deep to turn back. Where on your resume do you put "Job Experience: MAFIA earner, '69-'77? Then it becomes crazy as you become the man responsible for murders. And start seeing how quickly somebody goes from a living member of la famiglia to a cold body, often with no notice and weak reasoning, occasionally with seemingly little to no provocation or offense. Like a fierce but benevolent dictator, il padrino bestows great gifts and wealth upon his loyal and strong subjects but if you jeopardize him in any way the only punishment to be meted out is death. In this world Hill watched as other around him were killed but did nothing, even when he thought it unfair. It wasn't until he was in jeopardy, a jeopardy caused by his own addiction issues and personal demons, that suddenly he started to see the mafia in a different light. In that way is he a rat. Not for telling on these mini-dictatorships for their rampant killings and orchestrations of criminal and fatal activities. If he'd done this earlier, when Carbone et all were killed, he maybe woulda been a noble character. Thing is, they fucked up. and so did he. But when it was his turn, he had the foresight and sense - as well as, perhaps, the cowardice? - to save his own neck the only way he knew how, by turning on the very benevolent dictators from whom he'd attained his great money and position in life. He's not a rat for telling on the mafia (as much as I wish to believe him so, with my romantic notions of mafia and famiglia - alas, while the mob was an answer to the corruption inherent in the police force and the government's approach to the poor immigrant populations in major Eastern cities, the evolution of modern checks and balances as well as the shift from vice-peddler to hardcore-city-destroyer drug peddler rendered the mafia more of a sleazy shadow of the noble live and die by the sword mini-kingdoms it had been) but for only doing so out of self-preservation. Not to say I'd necessarily just roll over and die if in the situation. It's complicated.
As a man, though, he's no different than most of us, especially in this day and age. Take Wall Street. The Occupy movement is all about protesting the 80's and 90's culture of greed makes good that has come to dominate modern finance, a culture based on a simple principle of personal wealth amassment and throw aside all moral objections or feelings of remorse to victims at whose expense this wealth is made. When a friend asked me what happened to the great robber barons who made boatloads of money during prohibition (see BOARDWALK EMPIRE) I explained they'd found ways to manipulate the system to make it without committing ANY crimes. Often this world of might makes right leads to heavy vice. Which often leads to downfall (see Bernie Madoff or a man I did business with, Charles Martin). If Martin'd kept in the fairway, though, he coulda turned around, blamed other people and companies, and collected government assistance a la TARP Loans. Essentially turning to the government, claiming mea culpa, and getting a full absolution for all the crimes they'd committed. The difference being they'd fixed the system so that what had been criminal for most of American history was no longer illegal. And even more, a whole generation of loud mouths screaming about free-market economics and laissez faire capitalism, lobbying for reduced government intervention turned around and begged the government to step in when things didn't go their way, hypocrisy at its finest.
Or take the whole steroids debacle. Mark McGwire will forever be tainted and Barry Bonds' name is synonymous with cheater. But Jose Canseco came out with a book detailing his and other's abuses, pointing a shitload of fingers and breaking a certain professional athletics Omerta and somehow ends up a goddamn reality celebrity.
Henry Hill was just an average human aspiring to greatness and getting caught up in all the good that was coming to him but in the end turned on all he'd professed to believe in to save his own tail. His cocaine abuse led to his arrest which he knew would lead to his getting whacked so he turned in all the men he'd made money from and died today at 69 of disease. Not in a hail of bullets or with a garrote around his neck or a knife in his chest like a true gangster of old but in a bed of illness like a "schnook". Drugs brought him and the mafia down, as RICO charges and enforcement got ramped up when gangsters got into the dirty business of selling drugs, heroin being not as acceptable to fat jolly politicians as good old-fashioned betting or hookers. Just like drugs certainly plunged large populations of America into squalor and dysfunction and, in turn, the import of said drugs to feed these intense appetites have turned Mexico into a goddamn living warzone, they ruined the once-respected mafia, making it into little more than jokes about leisure suit-wearing troglodytes.
But even more his story, about an average guy who just wants to live the best life without ever having to pay for the consequences, all too accurately aligns with the current American attitude of not having to sacrifice or risk anything and yet expecting large gains. Henry Hill may be seen by some as a rat (for telling on his Famiglia, the struntz) and by others as a hero (for ratting on murderous animals who take the law into their own hands and often kill people who don't deserve to die). But I see him simply as a modern American man, trying to live a life of luxury and glamour without having to pay the piper should shit go wrong because in this modern era nobody has to die, right? A man striving to exceed the gifts that God gave him and, in this epoque of advanced social darwinism, who can default a man for doing whatever he can to get out of his own mess, even turning on those too slow to stop him? The man made it to 69. He has kids and certainly lived one helluva wild life. Fuck, he was the protagonist in Scorcese's best movie. What more can one ask for in life than that? In a world where organizations fire people with decades of loyal service and people abuse friendships to make more money for their company or position, who can fault Henry for his "ratting" in the name of self-preservation? Hell, considering that resume, the fact that the bastard lived as long as he did might actually make his one of the great late 20th century success stories. Certainly he's no worse than many of our leaders of industry, entertainment, and politics.
Right? You dirty schnook.
- Ryan
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