Movie Review : The Irishman (2019)

Martin Scorsese is a great film director, but he’s also a pretty honest and forthright one. His movies are a clear contract between him and the audience that involves clauses like: a lengthy-ass running time (usually over three hours), a wide cast of geriatric Italian-American actors, shady morals and endings that involve either lots of murders or mass arrests. Sometimes both. It’s exactly what I expected out of his new crime epic The Irishman and it’s exactly what I got. It’s a good movie… but it’s not that good? It sure feels like a movie I watched a hundred fucking times.

The Irishman tells the story of Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), a WWII veteran that went from meat-packing truck delivery to becoming a mafia hitman after meeting wiseguy Russell Bufalino (the immortal Joe Pesci) in the fifties. Frank quickly makes his way up the mafia ranks and gets introduced to mobbed up International Brotherhood of Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). He becomes his bodyguard and friend, which turns into a problem once Hoffa and his underworld associates start getting pressured by the Kennedy administration.

If The Irishman was a Bon Jovi song, it would be It’s My Life. It sounds like a classic, it had the same exact structure as one of the classics (Casino/Living on a Prayer), but it doesn’t quite recapture the magic. I mean: you got Robert De Niro playing the street-smart outsider; Joe Pesci is the fiery, but loyal wise-guy, they build an underground empire together and get torn apart by success, greed and police at the end. Outside of a the historical perspective brought by the Jimmy Hoffa character, The Irishman drags on for a long-ass time without offering surprise or novelty.

Another weird thing about The Irishman is the intense digital de-aging De Niro, Pacino and Pesci went through. I know it was sold to be a technological wonder, but it’s somewhat of a mindfuck too. Because that thing has limitations. It’s weird to see Joe Pesci call De Niro “kid” when the character is at least 50 years old. There’s a scene where Frank Sheeran is supposed to beat the shit out of a man who questioned his daughter’s character and it becomes evident Robert De Niro is a geriatric man and that he might break a hip before breaking one of his victim’s bones.

Here it is.

But The Irishman is a decent movie anyway. By that, I mean that it isn’t stupid, underwritten or poorly directed. It might be Martin Scorsese’s most polished and technically ambitious film. The lighting in particular is a lot less naturalistic than in Scorsese’s past movies (especially the crime epics). It’s a bold choice that helps The Irishman develop its own atmosphere and identity. When a movie is competently told and expertly crafted like The Irishman is, the script could come from the back of a cereal box and it would be watchable. It’s good by virtue of not being bad.

Does that make sense?

I believe the triumphant reception The Irishman received is a byproduct of the era we live in. We’re obsessed with living meaningful lives and because of that, movies that have built-in credibility are almost always better received than they should. We all want the new Star Wars to be the best one. We all want the new Scorsese to be a piece of history. It’s not always special, though and The Irishman isn’t, It’s a pleasant, nostalgic victory lap at best. Not the masterpiece that was promised to you by RottenTomatoes, who promises way too many masterpieces anyway.

6.8/10