The Irishman, a Review

[Barry]

                                                    The Irishman
This a new movie directed by Martin Scorsese. The movie is  3 hours and fifteen minutes long with 15 minutes of credits, for a total of 3.5 hours. The movie had a two week run in small theatres to be eligible for Academy Awards, otherwise, since it is streamed on Netflix it would eligible only for an Emmy. The image, in Dolby Vision and the sound (I don’t have Atmos) were perfect.

The fact that movies such as this one are now more likely to be made and seen on streaming services and not in movie theatres is an important topic, but not part of this review.

Simply, if you enjoyed Goodfellas and Casino, two movies directed by Scorsese and starring DeNiro and Joe Pesci you will like this one. It has bit of a slower pace than the previous two movies and a bit less energy. I give it 2.5 stars.

Robert DeNiro plays Frank Sheeran, who we first see at his very old age.  Sheeran, who claims to be the man who killed Jimmy Hoffa narrates the movie and brings us back to the early 1960s. At this point, computer CGI “de-ages” all involved. It is good technology but nowhere near perfect.  For me the faces often but not always pass the visual test but the bodies are still in their 70s and that often looks awkward. But the story is good and the actors convince us that they are younger!

Joe Pesci plays Russell Bufalino a mob guy who gets in the middle of everything and is just great. His scenes with DeNiro (which began in Raging Bull, I believe) are my favorite part of the movie. Al Pacino stars as the rising Jimmy Hoffa, who acts more like a corrupt President than a union leader.  Also in the movie are Harvey Kietel, Ray Romano and Anna Paquin, who has a small role.

In the 1960’s past we see the connection between the mob and the teamsters union, starting with the alleged fraud in Chicago in throwing the votes for John Kennedy. Many other historical events are shown and are linked to the story. That includes the Bay of Pigs invasion and Watergate. It did bother me that there is no proof to many of the assertions Scorsese makes, connecting those events to mob and corrupt union activities. To him, I guess, everyone is corrupted.  Of course, the clash of personalities and the different needs of a crooked union boss and the mob lead up to Hoffa’s murder in 1975. The disappearance is technically unsolved, but Sheeran said he did it.

By the way there are clever references to Goodfellas and Casino here.

Finally, and this is important. I felt like I was watching the “Director’s Cut” of the movie.  If this was a wide release, I bet the movie would have been 20-30 minutes shorter.  I enjoyed it but I did take a couple of breaks.

[David Vaughn]

Thanks Barry. I'll be sure to check it out over the holidays. 

[tripplej]

Thanks Barry. I will also try and check it out.

[Barry]

I kind of made a mistake. Not a big one.

I made this mistake before, I think.  Never Say Never Again was not a good movie, it was a remake of Thunderball, but I was so excited to see Sean Connery back as James Bond I thought it was a good movie the first time I saw it.  Perhaps, in a vacuum it was.  But when I saw it again, it was very flawed.

The Irishman is another one of those movies. I was so excited to see Pacino, DeNiro, and Pesci in another gangster movie directed by Martin Scorsese I let my emotions take over.

This is still a good movie, but not a great one and it is tedious in parts of its 210 minutes.  The plot is shaky and it plays with the actual facts of the era.  It treats rumors as being the truth. And while the facial “youthing” is effective, their body and movements are that of seventy year old men. I am a bit uncomfortable watching that a second time.

But you can’t go home again and that is what everyone is trying here. And I was trying too, I guess I wanted so much to enjoy this movie.  Scorsese, Coppola, Lucas and Spielberg changed Hollywood and brought in new types of movies and creating “blockbusters.” Now, nearly a half a century later, they are being replaced and Hollywood is changing again.  It has now become streamings time at bat. Except for Spielberg, the other three cannot raise money (from the Movie studios) to produce the movies they want. Perhaps it is because they still want to make the old movies like “The Irishman.”