American Dream is a concept that has been deeply inherited in American society for over 300 years. Its omnipresence contributed to representation of the Dream in Hollywood movies, mostly in gangster genre. Interconnection between the American Dream and gangster movies resulted in Martin Scorsese’s vision of the Dream being represented in his movies Goodfellas, Casino, and Mean Streets. In his gangsta narratives, Scorsese manifests his life-long experience and knowledge about Italian American community. The focus of this thesis was to analyse the ways in which Scorsese describes how masculinity and ethnicity assist in or alienate individuals from acquiring an American Dream. The analysis showed that the acquisition of the Dream is limited because of the gangsters’ ethnic heritage and masculine values that prevail in the Italian American community. Scorsese’s gangsters are represented as ambitious and fearless males who are engaged in illegal activities. They strive to pursue the Dream in that measure that they eventually abandon their values and traditions. The interrelationship between the representation of ethnicity and masculinity and the Dream demonstrates the paradoxical expectations and goals of the gangsters. Torn between traditional values of their ethnic community and the capitalistic lifestyle of America, gangsters eventually find themselves in an identity crisis that results in their inevitable self-destruction.