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Joe Pesci has an uncanny ability to go from warm and magnetic to cold and repulsive on a dime, and be totally convincing at both. Perhaps his greatest master class in sociopathic behavior comes in Goodfellas, in which he steals the movie from star Ray Liotta, and threatens to out perform De Niro. The talents of all three are on fine display in a scene in which Pesci gets insulted at a bar by a fellow mafioso, and De Niro, at his poker-faced best, and Liotta, young and hungry for violence and loyalty, intervene.
That said, if you only ever watch one scene with from Goodfellas or featuring Pesci, make sure it's this one: "What do you mean I'm funny? Funny how? Funny like I'm a clown? I amuse you?"
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Goodfellas isn't just the story of notorious mob rat Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), it's about a community of people trying to gain a foothold on their version of the American dream in Long Island, NY. Hill follows Jimmy the Gent (De Niro) as he rises through the underworld, but never really has to the stomach to take care of business the way Jimmy does. One of the greatest moments in the film involves Liotta watching De Niro choke a business owner who owes money, with a mixture of delight and fear.
There's also a great scene of De Niro, Pesci, and Liotta having dinner with Pesci's character's mother, which highlights Liotta and De Niro's bond - both are ultimately outsiders in their world, as they aren't full Italian, and don't speak the language.
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With Heat, Michael Mann accomplished many things, chief among them putting Al Pacino and Robert De Niro on screen together for one of the most tense dialogue scenes of the 20th century. It's hard to say whether Pacino is De Niro's co-star here, since the film focuses perhaps more on the former than the latter, but their meeting of the minds is the perfect collision of Pacino's twitchy theatrics and De Niro's restrained intensity.
Having the two greats face off in a diner is akin to cowboys with tremendous mutual respect meeting at high noon surrounded by innocent bystanders, each ready to draw his gun, both aware it's neither the time nor the place. In a stellar take on the "we're not so different, you and I speech," Al Pacino, as an LAPD who's after De Niro, leans in and says
"My life's a disaster zone. I got a step daughter so f*cked up because her real father's this large type asshole. I got a wife. We're passing each other on the down slope of a marriage, my third, because I spend all my time chasing guys like you around the block. That's my life."
The blocking and structure of the scene, much of which goes unseen to those not looking for it, is also a work of genius. See Mann, Pacino, and De Niro discuss it with Christopher Nolan.
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The Deer Hunter is one of the most emotionally draining, socially important movies of the 1970s. It stars Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken as a pair of friends whose lives are completely destroyed by the Vietnam War. Even if you haven't seen the film, you know about its famous, nerve-wracking Russian roulette scene, a metaphor for the war and its wasted generation, in which Walken's heartbreaking mental collapse is the perfect compliment to De Niro's deranged bravado.
The scene recurs much later, after Walken's character, suffering from extreme PTSD, has abandoned life, and De Niro goes looking for him. The scene reiterates the metaphor of Russian roulette as the war - at random, one lives, one survives.
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Awakenings was a sea change not just for De Niro, who audiences were used to seeing play tough guys and nut jobs, but for Williams, who showed incredible range as a doctor trying to wake patients from their comas. As much as this is a very serious film, Williams manages dole out a zinger on a doctor who doubts the coma patients are awake, with the hot burn of "If you were right I'd be inclined to agree with you."
The actors, one known for violent, unhinged characters, the other for mile-a-minute verbal insanity, bring quiet, measured gravitas to their roles. Their scenes together speak volumes even when both are quiet.
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Pick a movie from Robert De Niro's oeuvre and Harvey Keitel is probably there being very menacing (unless you go back to Mean Streets, in which Keitel was the lead and De Niro the crazy side man).The second time these two legends shared the screen, in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, Keitel played a long-haired pimp in trousers up to his nipples, and the chemistry between the native New Yorkers, Keitel loose and languid, De Niro tense and coiled, is electric. Their repartee in Taxi Driver features the greatest non sequitor ever spoken: "I once had a horse, on Coney Island. She got hit by a car."
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At some point in the '90s, Robert De Niro began to play with audience expectations by taking on roles that turned his classic hard man character on its head. Thanks to his willingness to make fun of himself, the world got Analyze This, a gangster movie in which Billy Crystal plays a psychiatrist and straight man to De Niro's crime boss. The film does a great job of showing the average American's simultaneous obsession with and revulsion to violence and tyrants.
When Crystal has De Niro call his nemesis to get closure, things go horribly wrong, after which Crystal deadpans, "It was going great until the cutting off of the balls and shoving them up his... ass."
Also: "There's your f*cking pillow."
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Meet The Parents is easily one of the strangest big budget family movies ever made. Not only does De Niro play a happy-go-lucky family man who rages on a dime, each scene plays out like something from a slightly less weird version of Mr. Show. The water polo, the toilet cat, Owen Wilson as a carpenter paying homage to Jesus. What?
As the lead, Ben Stiller spends most of the movie playing the straight man to every bizarre character he encounters, and his clenched, slowly building anger and chatty neurosis the perfect foil for all. In this role, he delivers a speech about milking a cat that sits comfortably at the intersection of cringe-inducing and hilarious - especially when he says, "You can milk anything with nipples." To which De Niro responds "I have nipples, Greg. Can you milk me?"
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For argument's sake, let's say you need to stress yourself out. Pick any scene from Silver Linings Playbook in which Robert De Niro yells about football (so, all of them) and you'll be immediately wishing you could float out of your body to a flying pirate ship.
You've seen Jennifer Lawrence in movies, you know she's great, but you don't know how hard she goes until she's yelling at De Niro about how he thinks she "f*cked up all the Eagles juju." While De Niro is delightfully intense in the scene, Lawrence crushes a monologue, explaining how, if De Niro's superstitions are correct, she's actually a good luck charm, rather than the harbinger of bad luck he thinks she is.
Lawrence finishes off her tirade with: "Not that I give a f*ck about football or about your superstitions, but if it's me reading the signs, I don't send the Eagles guy whose personal motto is 'Excelsior,' to a f*cking Giants game, especially when he's already in a legal situation." What a scene. Thanks be to David O Russell for casting these two in three movies together (even if they don't share any scenes in American Hustle).
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- Warner Bros. Pictures
The Intern should not have been as good as it was. Everything about it lulls you into believing it's going to be a Lifetime movie with a big budget, but the moment De Niro and Hathaway are on screen together, this movie takes off like a rocket. Their chemistry even makes a scene about signing an old man up for Facebook pop. Seriously, Hathaway somehow makes the line, "I just knew that a woman with a glass of wine and a laptop had real shopping potential" work perfectly.
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In The King of Comedy, De Niro plays a failed comedian who, along with his stalker friend Masha, played by Sandra Bernhard, kidnaps Jerry Lewis. If there's any actress who knows how to harness the manic energy needed to bring a scene to its tipping point, it's Bernhard. She plays deadpan and twitchy with a sense of nihilistic glee, like a New York intellectual who believes in nothingness so strongly she's out to prove, though anti-social behavior, meaning is a pointless, opressive construct.
Bernhard brings a surreal practicality to the film, despite the genuine weirdness of her character and delivery, making high comedy of recognizing the obvious, such as when De Niro's character offers her a mint while she's holding a gun to Jerry Lewis's head. She responds, "Yeah I'd love one, but it's a little inconvenient at the moment. Thank you."
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- Sony Pictures Classics
In Taylor Hackford's (Ray, The Devil's Advocate) 2016 dramedy The Comedian, De Niro plays Jackie Burke, an aging comedian navigating the world of online media while still working out his joke muscles at the comedy cellar. Danny Devito plays Jackie's brother, who just wants Jackie to care as much about family as he does his career, and to come to terms with what it means to age as an artist and human (in classic silver screen fashion, love comes along to help, courtesy of Leslie Mann).
When De Niro asks, "How are the kids?" Devito's deadpan delivery of "Kid. We have one kid." makes a punchline you see coming from a mile away absolutely devastating. Also, bonus points to Patti LuPone, who plays DeVito's wife, for her delivery of the line "Who are you, with your no-underwear dress?"
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