The Irishman

Starring: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Paquin, Stephen Graham, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Jack Huston, Kathrine Narducci, Jesse Plemons, Jim Norton
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Rating: R
Genre: Drama
2019

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A hitman (Robert De Niro) recalls his friendship with Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino).

Review:

Tim: The most amazing thing about The Irishman is that it exists at all. Without the backing of Netflix, Martin Scorsese would never have been allowed to make this movie the way he wanted to. That can be good or bad, but regardless, this movie probably shouldn't exist in its current form. However, we do get to see it as Scorsese intended. Yes, it has a number of flaws. However, it's fairly incredible as well.

It's absurd that Scorsese made this movie 3.5 hours long. It certainly feels epic due to the length, but it's obvious it was overly long. My favorite joke from the Academy Awards was that someone really enjoyed "season one of The Irishman". That's funny. It actually took me 3 days to watch this film. I might have felt differently about it had I had to do it in one sitting. However, breaking it up over multiple days allowed me to really appreciate what Scorsese made, without feeling too overwhelmed by the length. The positive side of this is that we get to go extremely deep with the characters. We see them in a light that just wouldn't be possible in a two-hour movie. I appreciated this as a fairly unique experience. That's one of the reasons I liked the movie so much.

The cast was excellent. This is probably the thing I appreciated the most about the film. To see Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci together at this stage of their career is just remarkable. I'll talk about the reverse aging effects in a bit. I have to applaud the big three. De Niro knows this type of movie inside and out and he made a solid protagonist. I thought his performance was strong, all things considered. I rarely believed he was the age he was supposed to be in the film, but his performance worked. Al Pacino was fantastic as Jimmy Hoffa. No doubt, Pacino is one of the all-time greatest actors. His performance here was filled with so much energy, so much righteous indignation. It was wonderful to see the fire in his belly. As great as De Niro and Pacino were, I have to say I'm a bit stunned by the performance of Joe Pesci. Pesci felt so underrated here because he gives perhaps the best performance of the film. He embodied this character so well and gave such a nuanced performance. It was wonderful and the highlight of the film. I so appreciated Pesci coming out of retirement for this film. I wonder if this is the last role he'll play. If so, he'll end his career with a bang.

The supporting cast was good, too. I enjoyed Harvey Keitel in a small role. It was surprising to see Ray Romano here, but he worked well. Anna Paquin conveyed a lot of emotion with very little dialogue. I'm never a huge Bobby Cannavale fan, but he gave a good performance. As a whole, everyone worked well.

One of the biggest appeals in this film was the extensive work done to de-age the actors for various scenes in the movie. I have to say that the technology is impressive, but it hasn't been perfected. There's too many scenes were it's obvious and jarring. Robert De Niro especially looked bizarre throughout much of the film. His performance was good, but the visual effects just didn't work well with him. It oftentimes took me out of the story. It's less apparent with the other cast members. I appreciate the attention to detail, but the technology still needs to improve. The one thing it can't do is make the 75 year-old De Niro move like a young guy. The film certainly requires some suspension of disbelief during those scenes.

I learned a lot about Jimmy Hoffa and his connections to organized crime. That is one of the great things about this lengthy movie- there's plenty of time to explore the context behind his murder and disappearance. I'm not quite sold on the details of Hoffa's disappearance as told in this film (from the little I've read, this likely isn't the truth) but it made for a good piece of entertainment. I have to say that Scorsese did a good job of keeping us interested. It felt like the story had a good sense of momentum and it dragged far less than I would expect for such a long movie. I know a lot of criticism about this movie was a sense of Scorsese just revisiting his greatest hits. That's probably true, but there's a wonderful nostalgic aspect to this movie. Scorsese, De Niro, Pacino, and Pesci aren't going to have many (if any) more chances to make a gangster movie like this. They've all made so many great movies over the years. It was fun to slip back into that world in this film. While this movie doesn't measure up to their greatest hits, it gets far closer than I would have expected.

It's interesting that The Irishman was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won zero. That's almost shocking, to see the film go 0-10. It probably should have won one of the technical awards. It makes me sad, because I do believe this is a great movie. I know Netflix films have won Oscars, so I don't think that was the main reason for its goose egg. It's a polarizing film and I get that people might not have enjoyed it, especially considering its length. For me, it was great to see these actors working for this director in an epic story. I'd consider this one of the best movies of 2019.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 8



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Goodfellas, The Godfather