The Irishman is a companion piece to Martin Scorsese's other gangster films, Goodfellas and Casino.
It is also a teaming up of his old pals for one last ride. Robert De Niro has not appeared in a Scorsese film since Casino. Neither has Joe Pesci who basically retired from the movies in 1998. Harvey Keitel last worked with Scorsese in The Last Temptation of Christ. Al Pacino is the new boy, his first time working with Scorsese.
The Irishman is less violent than Goodfellas and Casino. It still packs a punch although Scorsese has been more careful not to make these gangsters look as glamorous as in his previous films.
Spanning 40 years, Frank Sheeran (De Niro) recalls his story. A World War 2 veteran who fought in Italy, a truck driver who delivered meat who went on to become a man who painted houses (a hitman.) Sheeran got involved with Russell Bufalino (Pesci) a Pennsylvania gangster who kept a low profile. It brings him into contact with Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino) the leader of the powerful Teamster union who loaned money from its pension fund to organized crime. Sheeran went on to become close with Hoffa and a union organiser.
Scorsese has called The Irishman a chamber piece. It is mainly about its three main characters and only De Niro, Pesci and Pacino go through the digital de-aging process. They are made to look in their late 30s/40s for the early part of the film.
The film has the best cinema performances that De Niro and Pacino have given in years, mainly because the quality of some scripts they have been offered have been far from the best. Pacino plays Hoffa differently from Jack Nicholson in the movie Hoffa. Pacino's interpretation is of a man who likes ice cream sundaes, hates tardiness and unwilling to see reason because he thought the Teamsters owed him the leadership as a right. Pesci in contrast with his volatile Goodfellas character is a more thoughtful wiseguy here.
The film clocks in at three and half hours. It is too long and one hour could had easily been excised from it. The de-aging has been done sympathetically. It works mainly because we are never told how old they were when we see them at their younger age. However, you can make an actor in his 70s look thirty years younger, you cannot digitally make them move like younger men. You can spot De Niro gingerly climbing some rocks in one scene.
The treatment of females in this movie is superficial. Sheeran's and Bufalino's wives are just there to chain smoke. Only Sheeran's daughter Peggy shows unhappiness as to her father's chosen profession. Even then the old Peggy is wasted. At one point I did wonder why the film had a de-aged Holly Hunter playing Peggy. Only to realise she was played by Anna Paquin, who won an Oscar for playing Hunter's daughter in The Piano.
Despite the reservations, Scorsese has crafted a wonderful film, getting together the actors he relied on from his own early days as a director. There is an air of elegiac nostalgia to a style of cinema that might be passing away which Scorsese reflected on with his comments about Marvel superhero films. Ironic that The Irishman only got a limited cinema release as its main platform is Netflix.
