For a director full of heart, Martin Scorsese sure knows how to make movies about heartless people. His films are loaded with theft, beatings, torture, and murder. But sometimes the most vicious betrayals in a Scorsese movie are the lies his characters tell to each other and to themselves.
Well, that and catching a beating from a world champion boxer or an ax in the spine from a ruthless butcher.
Therefore, to celebrate Scorsese’s latest saga, The Irishman, and the director himself, here’s a list of the ten most heartless character moments in Martin Scorsese movies:
Gaslit - Goodfellas (1990)
Karen Hill’s (Lorraine Bracco) just tossed Henry Hill’s (Ray Liotta) car keys out their bedroom window. Why? Because she can’t grow up and accept that Henry’s one of the card-playing, piece-carrying, body-burying Goodfellas, and as a card-playing, piece-carrying, body-burying Goodfella, he’s still gonna go out tonight!
“Naht without yah car keys, yah naht!” Karen fires back, gaining a little ground…
Until Henry throws a lamp at her face and declares her f’ed in the head for not wising up to the fact that even though Saturday nights are still for the wife, Friday nights will always be for the girlfriend.
The Big Fluff - Cape Fear (1991)
Defense attorney Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte) should’ve known there are consequences to Buffalo Billing a Buffalo Bill like Max Cady (Robert De Niro). That didn’t stop him from letting Cady catch a (well-deserved) rape conviction and a fourteen-year prison sentence in Scorsese’s Cape Fear remake.
Cut to fourteen years later when Cady kicks off a wave of retribution by poisoning the Bowden family dog and seducing Bowden’s teenage daughter Danielle (Juliette Lewis), who can’t even remember what kind of dog it was in the first place, other than “big, and fluffy.”
But Cady’s murder of the Bowden family’s big and fluffy is only the basis of a far more elaborately constructed vengeance that ultimately climaxes on a boat trapped within the hell of a stormy night on the sea.
The Blue Chip Stock Like Kodak - The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013)
It’s hard to believe there was a time when the average person would trust a cold-caller like Wolf of Wall Street Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), but as they say, every minute a sucker is born.
Kicking off his new firm out of an old Long Island garage, Belfort educates his minions on how to harpoon financial f’ing whales just like Captain F’ing Ahab.
But first, Belfort warms up by cold-call coercing a much smaller fish named Kevin into a five-thousand-dollar investment in a “blue-chip stock like Kodak,” pumping Kevin up over the phone to make big money while simultaneously mock rear-ending Kevin over his desk for being just another sucker in just another minute.
Sweet Iris, Free Iris - Taxi Driver (1976)
Spoiler alert.
In the Taxi Driver climax, New York City cabbie Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) lights up a bunch of low-life sex traffickers with his own personal arsenal, managing to singlehandedly flat-line pimp Sport (Harvey Keitel), slaughter his minions, and free twelve-year-old prostitute Iris (Jodie Foster).
Happily ever after, yeah?
No, because if Bickle’s massacre hadn’t merely been about satisfying his long-boiling bloodlust, he might’ve simply, um, maybe just called the police to come to save Iris as opposed to leaving her with the trauma of seeing him eject a man’s brain from his skull right in front of her face.
Twenty-Four Human Beings - Shutter Island (2010)
In Scorsese’s Shutter Island, washed-up U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) investigates a disappearance on an island prison for the criminally insane, all the while riding out a nasty hurricane that threatens to flood the facility and unleash its most violent prisoners.
During the storm, an ethical debate over the fate of the Ward C prisoners is hashed out between psychiatrists Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), who votes to leave the twenty-four violent Ward C prisoners unshackled and with a fighting chance to survive, and Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow), who votes to manacle the inmates to the floor despite knowing they’ll drown if the ward floods.
Dr. Naehring’s heartlessness encourages Daniels’ skepticism, leaving him to dive deeper into his own denial and drown in his own storm of heartlessness.
The Democratic Way - Gangs Of New York (2002)
Amidst a tense and revolutionary election season in 1862 New York, nationalist gangster Bill ‘The Butcher’ Cutting (Daniel-Day Lewis) and immigrant sheriff nominee Walter ‘Monk’ McGinn (Brendan Gleeson) spar over politics.
At the election’s height, Cutting lures McGinn out of a clean shave at the local barbershop to initiate a decisive duel. McGinn instead elects to invite Cutting into the barbershop to resolve things the democratic way…
Until Cutting elects to take another option, casting his minority vote by axing McGinn in the back, rendering him nothing more than notch forty-five on the death club Cutting swings into McGinn’s skull to finish him off.
Just For A Little While - Casino (1995)
Of all the bloodsuckers, of all the hustlers, of all the gold diggers in Scorsese’s Vegas crime saga Casino, Ginger (Sharon Stone) has to be the one that mafia-backed casino king Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein (Robert De Niro) wifes up.
Rothstein knows Ginger’s a bottomless money pit, and Ginger makes him pay every chance she gets, most viciously when she ties her and Rothstein’s daughter to the bed so she can go out and party on his dime, “just for a little while,” leaving Rothstein to wonder why he didn’t believe Ginger when she told him she never loved him in the first place.
314 Washington Street - The Departed (2006)
Rats infest Scorsese’s The Departed. Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) is a rat working undercover in the police for crime boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a rat working undercover in Costello’s outfit for the police. And (spoiler alert) Costello is the biggest rat of them all, working as an informant for the FBI.
Following a shootout where Costello thug Delahunt (Mark Rolston) catches a bullet, the address 314 Washington Street tips Delahunt off that Costigan is an undercover cop, prompting Costigan to pull a gun on Delahunt. He lucks out when Delahunt dies before Costigan can pull the trigger.
Sure, Costigan didn’t kill Delahunt, but he would’ve if he could’ve. And since Costigan knows right from wrong, doesn’t that make him even more heartless than Sullivan and Costello, who never knew right from wrong at all?
Brotherly Beatdown - Raging Bull (1980)
In Raging Bull, boxer Jake La Motta (Robert De Niro) is just as vindictive at home as he is in the ring, illustrated most clearly when he accuses his wife Vickie (Cathy Moriarty) and his brother Joey (Joe Pesci) of sharing a bed behind his back.
After years of suffering the fallout from La Motta’s delusions, Vickie reaches her breaking point, and instead of telling La Motta the truth she decides to roll with his craziness by admitting to affairs that exist only in his mind.
“I f’ed all of ’em! Whadda you want me to say? Tommy, Salvy, your brother, all of ’em!”
Buying her lie, La Motta walks straight over to Joey’s house, busts into a not-so-peaceful family dinner, and beats the absolute hell out of Joey, thus forever severing his relationship with the only man who was always in his corner.
A Plane To Detroit - The Irishman (2019)
Over the course of Scorsese’s latest jewel of cinema, mafia hitman Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) progresses from sitting in awe of Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) to becoming Hoffa’s closest ally and friend.
But when Sheeran’s boss Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) orders Sheeran onto a plane to Detroit to kill Hoffa before Hoffa rats out the entire criminal underworld, Sheeran reluctantly participates in the charade by manipulating the trust he’s earned from Hoffa and killing Hoffa the moment he turns his back on him.
If nothing else, at least it all happens so fast that Hoffa doesn’t even have a moment to realize Sheeran was the one who pulled the trigger.
