Martin Scorsese’s storied
legacy needs no introduction at this point, having built his repertoire as one
of if not the greatest filmmakers working today with landmark film after landmark
film. It’s gotten to a point that when he announces he’s making a gangster
film, people more or less know exactly what to expect and are eager to see him
show his legion of imitators how it’s really done. The Irishman, which
is currently going through a limited theatrical run before heading to Netflix at
the end of the month, is clearly built upon the same blueprint as Goodfellas,
Casino and The Wolf of Wall Street, but with the benefit of
hindsight and introspection that can only come with old age, there’s a
foreboding sense of inevitability that looms over it’s three and a half hour
runtime.
Adapted for the screen by
Steven Zaillian from the novel I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles
Brandt, our story follows Frank Sheeran (Robert DeNiro), a World War II vet and former
truck driver who finds himself in the employment of a Philadelphia mob family as
a hitman. His skills eventually find him in the good graces of teamster’s union
leader Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), who was once the most powerful man in America
whose last name wasn’t Kennedy, until he mysteriously disappeared in 1975.
Sheeran, looking back on his life having outlived all of his colleagues,
reveals the truth behind Hoffa’s disappearance, the role he had in it, and
why Hoffa had to go.
In many ways, The Irishman
is both a celebration and deconstruction of the high-flying gangster flicks
that Scorsese built his name upon. While it does follow the same basic pattern
as his most lauded forays into that genre (Small-timers stumbling upon the scam
of a lifetime, inside baseball looks at how it operates, montages of our
characters reaping the benefits and living in the lap of luxury, things escalating
until all their bridges are burned before reaching an inevitably violent end and
the survivors are left to resign themselves to a life of normalcy), the thrill
is now gone. Frank has entered a life of crime in his middle ages, it’s treated
more like an everyday job than a sensationalist parade of hedonism, and when
the party’s over, he’s left with even less than what he started with. The
narrative is Frank looking back on his life after most of his colleagues are
long dead and gone, and as opposed to Henry Hill or Jordan Belfort waxing nostalgic
for all the money and power they had, all Frank is left with is shame and
regret.
That shame and regret largely
stems from how his chosen profession has damaged his relationships, notably with
his daughter Peggy (Anna Paquin) whose resentment of him grows as she does, but
mainly between his loyalty between Jimmy Hoffa and Frank’s handler Russell
Bufalino (Joe Pesci) after their alliance dissolves over their loyalty to the
Kennedy brothers. Both parties treated him very well, but the cutthroat nature
of their respective businesses and their massive egos were too much to keep each
other at bay when the going gets tough. Although the movie sides with the largely
unprovable conspiracy that the Kennedy assassinations were organized by the mob
over land disputes in Latin America, I can’t quite ascertain the veracity of
those claims, historical accuracy is not the main focus here. The focus is to
show all the emptiness of a life of crime that’s left when all the glitz and
glamor is stripped away, and even if it does inspire a whole new generation of
filmmakers, there’s no way that an empty Frank Sheeran could be misinterpreted
as some misunderstood anti-hero the way Travis Bickle, Henry Hill or Jordan
Belfort have.
As this is Scorsese laying the
genre he perfected to rest, it’s only appropriate that he call upon his old
muses to be the pallbearers. Robert DeNiro, in his ninth collaboration with
Marty, plays Frank over the course of four decades with help of de-aging CGI to
bring him back to his younger self. While the CG is a bit waxy at first,
especially in the beginning, you hardly notice it after a while, especially in
the end when you see him in struggling to make it from one end of the room to
the next in his nineties. Like Goodfellas and Casino, The Irishman
is a collection of hot-tempered egos butting heads, but with an unusual role
reversal. Joe Pesci, having been coaxed out of retirement for this feature, is
a stark contrast to the hotheaded firebrand he normally portrays. His turn as
Russell Bufalino is instead the voice of reason: cool, calm and constantly in
control, but still gives off the air that he would kill your whole family if
you crossed him and go about his day like nothing happened. The real magnetic
force of this film is Al Pacino as the famously stubborn and charismatic Jimmy
Hoffa, using his famously over-the-top tendencies to turn him into a self-made
Shakespearean tragedy of someone whose sheer determination and overconfidence lead
to both his rise to power and ultimate downfall. It’s easy to forget how great
these actors are since one’s been retired and the other two have spent the last
two decades taking on some pretty questionable roles, but if anyone can coax
some career-best performances from them at this stage in their lives, it’s
Scorsese.
Although the monstrous three-and-a-half-hour
runtime may seem like an intimidating roadblock for some (unless you watch a
lot of Bollywood films or marathon the director’s cut of Lord of the Rings
on a regular basis), but even if you start feeling antsy in those final
stretches, Scorsese makes sure that those 200+ minutes fly by and are never wasted.
There’s still the intense, lively pace that he’s known to keep things going, with
Thelma Schoonmaker’s airtight editing daisy-chaining swanky parties, heated arguments
and cold-blooded assassinations, buffered by quieter moments that build the
anticipation to a fever pitch. There’s a twenty-minute sequence that’s nearly
devoid of dialogue, but the tension of it builds and builds before lulling into
a dour death march, forcing us to feel the weight of these actions in real
time.
Bottom line, The Irishman
is yet another triumph from one of Hollywood’s most lauded filmmakers. I wouldn’t
begrudge anyone who would rather wait for it to be released on Netflix and
watch it in shifts, but whether it’s on the big screen or the small screen, it’s
not something to be missed.
8/10
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