Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman is a movie that I wasn’t looking forward to. Despite Scorsese being my favorite living filmmaker, and his previous movie (2016’s Silence) being one of his best, the lead up press going into the production of this movie did not get me excited. There was much made about who was going to be in it: Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci coming back to collaborate with Scorsese for the first time since 1995’s Casino, Harvey Keitel coming back to Scorsese for their sixth movie together and the first since Last Temptation of Christ in 1988, Al Pacino working with Scorsese for the first time, Scorsese’s Gangs of New York co-writer Steve Zaillian writing the script from the book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt. And a lot of talk of how this was Scorsese back with another mob movie, the genre he’s most associated with despite it only being about 5 out of 40 movies he’s made. It all had a feeling of “let’s get the band back together before we all die (De Niro is the youngest of the group, having just turned 76) despite us not being able to make great music anymore.” Scorsese has been doing great work his whole career but when was the last time De Niro was great? Jackie Brown, I guess? That was 1997. Pacino? He’s been all over the place the last couple decades and even when he’s been great the movies usually aren’t as good as him. And he’s been terrible in terrible movies as well. Pesci has been retired. I didn’t realize that Keitel wasn’t, I just haven’t seen him in a while. There were reports that the budget of the movie ballooned due to the de-aging technology Scorsese was employing to make the actors look younger (makeup wasn’t gonna cut it). The announced runtime was three and a half hours. The movie just had a cloud of “potential disaster” hanging over it to me. It was a weird feeling that everyone seemed to be excited about this project except for me, the big Scorsese fan. I just had a bad feeling about it.
I’m happy to say I was shown pretty quickly that I needn’t have worried. The 3.5 hours flies by in a really delightfully wonderful way. Scorsese, the one of the group with the best track record, was the one in charge here and he’s still at the top of his game even at the age of 77. The Irishman follows the career and life of Frank Sheeran (De Niro) as he gets involved with mobsters like Russell Bufalino (Pesci) and eventually with legendary Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino). Sheeran becomes a confidant, driver, muscle, and hit man for both men. He also sometimes has to play peacemaker between the hot headed Hoffa, and the quieter, more controlled and diplomatic Russell. And although a lot happens plot wise, most of the movie hinges on those three actors acting those parts.
Pacino is right at home in the role of the loud mouthed Hoffa. Hoffa loved hamming it up and being the person everyone in the room had their eyes on. But even though Pacino has become known for his big outbursts and over the top performances, he’s always been more interesting in his quieter moments. He’s got both here. Hoffa lets down his guard around Frank, we see the firebrand out in public and the loving husband and father he was at home, and Pacino is infinitely watchable in all of his moments. It’s a terrific performance and definitely one of Pacino’s late career highlights.
Pesci was typically the one to take on the “wild card” role, whether it was Tommy in Goodfellas or Nicky in Casino, or even in non-Scorsese roles like My Cousin Vinny or Home Alone. He was the one with the twinkle in his eye that you didn’t know what he was gonna do and you couldn’t take your eyes off of him. Pesci’s role here is much more subdued but no less watchable. Pesci is magnetic and you can feel Russell’s power just from the looks he is giving and the carefully chosen words he says. It’s not the Pesci I expected to see and I’m very happy about that because he’s extraordinary here. His final scenes, where you can see the ravages of old age tearing down this powerful man, are heartbreaking and never because Pesci is pushing for that, he just embodies it and let’s us see. It’s my favorite of the performances in the movie.
De Niro shows that he simply hasn’t worked with the right people in the last 20+ years. He’s not had roles that were worthy of him and he’s seemed okay with that. Even with his collaborations with David O. Russell, I didn’t care for the performances that much. They weren’t bad, but De Niro’s Oscar nomination for Silver Linings Playbook felt more like a “congratulations on trying again, Bob” nod. But with Scorsese, working together for the ninth time, De Niro has a filmmaker who is not only worthy of him but pushes him into higher levels of genius. De Niro is one of the greatest actors we’ve ever been given, and although his work here isn’t up there with Godfather part 2, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, or maybe even Goodfellas, it’s still great work. It’s just at a “one of the best of the year” levels of performance instead of his past “one of the best of all time” level. De Niro makes us believe the journey, even when some of the CGI de-aging looks a little weird. His ability to play the ruthless mob killer as well as the conflicted protector of two guys with two different ideologies as well as the broken old man just wanting to apologize to his daughters for being a shitty dad is really astounding when you think about it. And Scorsese lets the camera linger a lot on De Niro’s face, which tells so much of Frank’s inner journey that goes unsaid with dialog. Scorsese trusts De Niro and trusts that the audience understands and cares about this guy.
The rest of the supporting cast is littered with terrific actors, characters, and performances as well. Ray Romano as Russell’s lawyer, Jesse Plemons as Hoffa’s son, Keitel as a mob boss (though he’s hardly in the movie, which surprised me given his history with Scorsese, he’s only got a couple of lines), Stephen Graham as a rival mob boss named Tony Pro, and others. My favorite of the bunch might’ve actually been Anna Paquin as Sheeran’s daughter who seems to always be watching him. Paquin has only maybe 3 lines of dialog in the movie, and is played by a different actress as a child, but that character is always looking at Frank, suspicious, almost like an angel watching as her dad digs his moral grave. She’s a felt presence more than a character who engages in the action.
But this begs a question that comes up in me from time to time: Why do we care about the things bad people do in movies? Scorsese has made a career of exploring the high and low in humanity, the desperate reach up towards God, the struggle of faith, the search for love and inner peace, and also made movies about the dark thoughts inside our minds, the self destructive behaviors we may or may not be aware of. Scorsese has also made, even as he and I both bristle at him being called a “mob movie director”, movies about terribly angry gangsters whose lives are filled with the constant threat of violence, almost as a specter always following them around waiting to explode at a moments notice. Scorsese, especially alongside his legendary collaborator in editor Thelma Schoonmaker, makes these violent excursions into propulsive entertainment in a really crowd pleasing way and I’m honestly not sure why we’re compelled by it. I am compelled, but I’m not sure why.
This is all pretty well trodden ground in movies, and by Scorsese in particular. What is here that wasn’t already in Casino or Goodfellas as far as theme, character, and even plot? Sure Scorsese hasn’t ever made a movie about Jimmy Hoffa, but the structure and the characters are all mob archetypes and Hoffa is no different.
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