AS FAR BACK as I can remember, I always wondered why there was no remastered DVD of Goodfellas. It was bad enough knowing there exists a special edition of The Godfather Part III. And yet the only version available of Martin Scorsese’s mob masterpiece was a disc so primitive you had to flip it over to continue watching. (It brings to mind the injustice of The Godfather on VHS and how the first cassette ends immediately after Sonny is killed at the causeway.) But last month, that question was finally resolved with the rerelease of Goodfellas in a 2-disc (all-new digitally transferred) special edition series, which includes two commentary tracks: one with members of the cast and crew, including Scorsese, Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, author Nicholas Pileggi, and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, and another called “Cop and Crook,” featuring real-life ex-mobster Henry Hill and the man who put him into witness protection, Edward McDonald.

Someone recently asked me, Is this really a big deal? The answer depends on where you fall within the three categories of Goodfellas viewers: The first are those who are entirely repulsed by the violence. You ask these people if they’ve ever seen the movie and all they remember is the infamous trunk-stabbing scene. The rest is a bloody blur. The second type recognizes it as a cinematic classic, powerfully rendered. They’ll watch the movie if it’s on television but probably won’t go out of their way to rent or buy it. And then there’s the third–those who treat it as a religious experience. They’ve seen it hundreds of times. Obsessed, they drop lines into ordinary conversation. And though some would never admit it, they sometimes wish they had that life, above the law and free to administer their own form of justice. (When asked about the appeal of the pernicious Ralphie in The Sopranos, actor Joe Pantoliano summed up by saying, “Look, how many times have you been insulted in your life or embarrassed by someone, where you fantasized on the way home how you could bash that person’s brain in for doing that to you?”)