It's an awfully tricky task for a director to make a film centered around gangsters, particularly those who are based on real-life individuals, while not glamorizing them or their actions. Just as the villain is often more interesting than the hero, the cinematic gangster is often more charismatic than the federal investigators whose job it is to hunt him down. Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather made the audience sympathize with, and essentially root for, a family of criminals. Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas took a slightly different approach, showing a decidedly less romantic view of the mob, and yet the film is still made with great style, energy and humor that it borders on glamorizing a bunch of mobsters throughout it's two and a half hour running time. Scorsese has always defended his approach to his depiction of the mob, indicating that he has to show the allure of this lifestyle or else it wouldn't make any sense as to why it's so appealing to these guys in the first place. That's a fair point, and it's a great film, but there's no doubt that this approach has also had the unfortunate effect of being misunderstood by certain members of its audience.
