Movie Review: The Irishman

The Irishman ***** / *****

Directed by: Martin Scorsese.

Written by: Steven Zaillian based on the book by Charles Brandt.

Starring: Robert De Niro (Frank Sheeran), Al Pacino (Jimmy Hoffa), Joe Pesci (Russell Bufalino), Jesse Plemons (Chuckie O'Brien), Anna Paquin (Peggy Sheeran), Harvey Keitel (Angelo Bruno), Bobby Cannavale (Felix 'Skinny Razor' DiTullio), Stephen Graham (Anthony Provenzano), Jack Huston (Robert F. Kennedy), Domenick Lombardozzi (Anthony Salerno), Aleksa Palladino (Mary Sheeran), Kathrine Narducci (Carrie Bufalino), Ray Romano (Bill Bufalino), Sebastian Maniscalco (Joseph 'Crazy Joe' Gallo), Jake Hoffman (Allen Dorfman), Stephanie Kurtzuba (Irene Sheeran), Louis Cancelmi (Sally Bugs), Kate Arrington (Connie Sheeran), Jim Norton (Don Rickles), India Ennenga (Dolores Sheeran), Gary Basaraba (Frank 'Fitz' Fitzsimmons), Paul Herman (Whispers), Jordyn DiNatale (Connie Sheeran - 14-16), Welker White (Josephine Hoffa), Jennifer Mudge (Maryanne Sheeran), Lucy Gallina (Peggy Sheeran - 7-11), Dascha Polanco (Nurse).

 

Martin Scorsese is 77 years old (and is mostly right about Marvel movies), and while he shows no real signs in slowing down (in the decade just closing, he directed 5 features, 5 documentaries, 2 television pilot and a short – and he has four films listed as “upcoming” on IMDB) and it feels like The Irishman is a film that Scorsese just had to make before the end of his career, and his life. It is his return to, and burial of, the gangster genre – where he brings back many of the familiar faces from the famous films of his past, one major face that somehow he never worked with before and has made an epic, three-and-a-half-hour farewell to the gangster genre, which is really a slow moving examination of aging and death. This isn’t the film of a younger man – the Scorsese who made GoodFellas 29 years ago or Casino 24 years ago – could not have made this film. It is very much a film about what happens after those films are over – when you are eventually left alone in a room, everyone you’ve ever known is dead, and you’re left with nothing but memories and regret. It is an epic masterpiece – and the film Scorsese had to make before he stopped.

 

In the film, Robert DeNiro plays Frank Sheeran – an Irish-American truck driver from Philly, who served in WWII, who will eventually fall in with the wrong guys, and then just kind of keep falling – making one compromise after another, until there’s nothing left. The film takes place over decades – Scorsese utilizing CGI de-aging technology so that the major characters can be played by the same actor at every point in his life (about the de-aging, I will say it was distracting for a scene or two, and then I mainly got used to it, and didn’t notice). First, he meets mob boss Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) and starts doing some work for him, gradually more and more violent work. And then, he’ll be loaned out to work for Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) – Frank being a union man himself, and one willing to do whatever it takes to win.

 

The Irishman is probably most similar to GoodFellas or Casino in Scorsese’s filmography – with one massive difference – this time, the film is more leisurely paced. Those two films felt as if Scorsese wanted to move at breakneck speed from beginning to end – always hanging on that razor edge of violence, or as if we were the coked up Henry Hill ourselves. The framing device for much of The Irishman is a long car ride that Frank and Russell take together with their wives – from Philly to Detroit – which takes an even longer time because Russell won’t allow anyone to smoke in his car, and the wives smoke constantly. This is Scorsese letting you know early to buckle in – this is going to be a very long ride.

 

Yet, Scorsese earn the epic length of The Irishman – it needs to be this long in a way because of how much more the film is about, other than a gangster movie. If the movie was really about what really happened to Jimmy Hoffa, then the film wouldn’t have waited 45 minutes to introduce Hoffa, and wouldn’t go on for at least 30 minutes after we get that answer (it isn’t by the way – the film is based on a book based on what Frank told a writer – much of it probably untrue. Scorsese and company basically treat it as historical fiction – or perhaps a tall tale your aging grandfather would tell you to keep you from leaving). This is a film with the weight of history hanging over it – and the weight of death. Scorsese often pauses the movie for a second when he introduces a new character – to tell us what sort of violent end that person will eventually meet – the effect is at once comic, and tragic – exactly the right tone.

 

Frank is at the center of nearly every scene in the film – and it really his story, how he makes one compromise after another, and how slowly the guise of being a good guy slips away from him, without him quite noticing until it is too late. The film has the trademark sudden flashes of violence of Scorsese’s other pictures – they are shocking and bloody, and over in the blink of an eye. They somehow feel more tragic than ever before as well – less exhilarant, more melancholy though. Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker do a masterpiece of slowing the whole thing down, forcing you to look a little deeper. He also mostly abandons his rock soundtrack treatment that he has used since Mean Streets (1973), for a sadder, slower soundtrack – including a score by Robbie Robertson.

 

The performances in the film are great. DeNiro is wonderful here – and if it’s a little distracting that DeNiro in this film isn’t the same DeNiro at 45 we saw in previous Scorsese films, not quite as quick to anger or violence, that’s also by design. DeNiro, who has basically mostly been sleepwalking through movies for the better part of two decades now, seems to know he cannot do that this time. While there is some reliance on old tricks – it’s not that much either. And there is a scene, with him on the phone to Hoffa’s wife, that is really one of the absolute best moments of DeNiro’s entire career. Pacino is perfect casting as Jimmy Hoffa as well – and it was smart on Scorsese to call on perhaps the actor best known for gangster movies who has never been in a Scorsese one before for this role. Hoffa is an outsider here – someone welcomed in, but kept at a distance. Pacino, who has the tendency to go big in his films more often than not these days goes really BIG with Hoffa – but it’s appropriate. Hoffa was a larger than life character, and Pacino’s demeanor here is perfect. The MVP of the movie though is Pesci – making just the third movie of his career in the last 20 years, his Russell Bufalino is every bit as cold and psychopathic as his characters in GoodFellas or Casino – but instead of going full psycho, he plays it calm, exuding authority. He doesn’t have to be like those characters, because Russell knows that people will do what they’re told, if they’re told by him to do it. His ultimate end here – like everyone’s – is tragic and sad. You spend so much time with these characters, that even though you know just how awful they are, you still feel empathy for them just the same.

 

I don’t know that anyone has ever taken a gangster film as far as Scorsese does in The Irishman – or that anyone ever thought to do so. The film opens and closes with tracking shots in a nursing home that Frank is leaving out his days – alone. His friends are dead, his family (represented by Anna Paquin, who is exquisite in her few scenes – but like all the women in the film, are basically silent – which you can view as a problem, but I think it part of the point of the film) knows who he is, and doesn’t much care what happens next. This is what happens if you live longer enough. And it comes at the end of another Scorsese masterpiece – a film that definitely ends one chapter in Scorsese’s career. If he continues to make movies – and I hope he does for years – I even wonder if he’ll ever make as definitive a closing statement as The Irishman.