♥♥♥♥♥
+ Best Comeback Actor of the Year: Joe Pesci + Best Epic of the Year + Best Gangster Movie of the Year + Most Expensive Flop of the Year: 155.8-246.8 mil. $ range + Worst Dollar Return of the Year: 0.05-0.03 Times the Cost + Worst Poster of the Year
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| Joe Pesci in the front looks strange around his eye on this uninspired poster for Martin Scorsese's The Irishman |
Frank Sheeran is an able WWII veteran who works as a truck driver in Philadelphia in the 1950s, when he is introduced to mob head Russell Bufalino and starts working for him. The country's most influential union leader, Jimmy Hoffa, also makes Sheeran's acquaintance and makes use of him for many years, until he has driven himself into a corner.
The Irishman is written by Steve Zaillian (Schindler's List (1993)), based on the memoir I Heard You Paint Houses (2004) by Charles Brandt (The Right to Remain Silent (1988)), and directed by New-Yorker master filmmaker Martin Scorsese (Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)) whose 25th feature it is.
The film is a major work, an ambitious and terrific production of a filmmaker who is afforded the rare luxury of roaming around a hugely costly period drama that runs 3½ hours. It is Scorsese's longest film to date, his best since The Departed (2006), which was a (gangster) thriller, and his best straight-up gangster movie since Casino (1995).
The Irishman can be described as having three major parts: The first part is the anecdotal part, where Scorsese tells a story, a story of gangsters, which he has perfected and made a familiar style of which multitudes have tried to copy the world over: This time Robert De Niro (Meet the Fockers (2004)) as Sheeran doubles as narrator, as he seems to be relating his life's story to us from the nursing home he has wound up in. The second and third part of the film are shorter than the first part, which probably runs about half the film: SPOILER The second part could be coined; The End of Hoffa. Those familiar with American history will know that Jimmy Hoffa disappeared mysteriously in July 1975 and that his body was never found. The film portrays how unyielding Hoffa's combative side overtakes his reason, and how even his closest friends can't dissuade him to leave a course, which ultimately gets him executed by Sheeran himself, his perhaps closest friend. The detail that Scorsese devotes to this section of the film plies it with dramatic weight: Though Sheeran has taken several lives during his life, this is a most terrible job, and the nerves and sweat of the inevitable action, which changes his life, are very palpable.
The third part of the film concerns growing old and dying. The film is different from Scorsese's previous gangster films in that it has an eye on death throughout, and not death that is celebrated in 'cool' or bad-ass killings but death as the inevitable fact of life that it is: Throughout the film texts on characters stopped in motion informs us how and when their real-life counterparts met their (mostly) violent deaths. This is an effective antidote to the glamour inherent in the gangster lifestyle that is also depicted: It usually ends prematurely. But the focus on death gets its own whole part of the film, as Sheeran as an old man struggles with walking but more with his daughter Peggy's refusing to see him; a man facing the loneliness and silence of an life's last period. The section is truly profound and very human.
The Five Satins' 1956 song In the Still of the Night enforces the experience.
A stricter, conventional studio backer would have trimmed The Irishman to 2½-3 hours at the writing stage to ensure its theatrical profitability, and the story could have been tightened, - but something would have been missed, and I can't point to thing in The Irishman that I would want to miss. Ultimately it is a joy to see the long film that Scorsese wanted us to see, and this story is so rich with events and drama that it sustains the length.
What is a shame is that the film is only available in very few cinemas (mostly only in the biggest cities), and precious few run times as well. This is because Netflix, the film's main financier, do not care much about cinemas and movie-lovers attending them but stand firm on their business of catering to couch-potatoes. This stubborn policy is indeed a pain to endure when the product here happens to be the great new epic by one of cinema's top chiefs globally.
The Irishman is of note also as one of the first major films that use CGI to de-age its stars: As the film opens we see a younger De Niro, Joe Pesci (Easy Money (1983)) as Bufalino and Al Pacino (Chinese Coffee (2000)) as Hoffa. Pacino doesn't look as young as a man in his 40s, which he is supposed to, and De Niro and Pesci have a rubbery stiffness and strange, digital shine to them that makes one think, unfortunately, of wax figures. This is tricky technology and not perfect yet. Perhaps the film would have been better off with a trio of younger actors casting their lot in the picture for this part of it.
There are two other castings in The Irishman, which didn't sit perfect with me: Domenick Lombardozzi (The Wire (2002-08)) as Fat Tony was the problem in reverse, as a too young (though fine) actor was propped up in make-up and prosthetics to be the much older character. - Why not just cast a fine actor in the appropriate age range? The other one is Anna Paquin (Bellevue (2017)): Suddenly in the film Sheeran's teenage daughter Peggy is Paquin, who is 37 years old in real life, and obviously doesn't look like someone who was just a teenager. Paquin is good but this casting is terrible.
De Niro is tremendous as Sheeran, who doesn't feign a remorse which isn't there naturally in the end, even if his confessor searches for it. Pesci is very different from his iconic gangster portrayals of the past: Bufalino is an elegant and dignified gangster. Pacino is perfect as the divisive Hoffa, who goes from being the main man for 2.3 mil. Teamster members to being side-tracked and hated. The Irishman is cinema. No surprise it should be seen in one.
Related posts:
Martin Scorsese: 2019 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2019 in films - according to Film Excess
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
Top 10: The best biopic movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) - One helluva movie!
Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (2011) - Stapleton's Corman doc. is among the year's best films (interview subject)
Hugo (2011) - Scorsese's critically acclaimed, magical 3D family adventure/financial disaster
Shutter Island (2010) - Scorsese's heavy-handed, long, second huge thriller attempt
Boardwalk Empire - 1st season (2010) - Luxurious 1920's ensemble gangster treats
(executive producer)
Top 10: Best crime movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
The Departed (2006) - Scorsese's Boston-set wildcat of a capital letter Movie
The Aviator (2004) - The grand American biopic
Top 10: Best 'box office success' movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
Top 10: The best true story movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
Casino (1995) - Scorsese's sumptuous Vegas gangster tale has the wingspan of a Greek tragedy
The Age of Innocence (1993) or, Stayin' IN the Pants
Cape Fear (1991) - Scorsese adds lots of stuff to remake but loses the balance
Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 159 mil. $
Box office: Estimated 7.5 mil. $ and counting
= Box office disaster (primarily made for streaming/VOD)
[The Irishman premiered 27 September (New York Film Festival) and runs 209 minutes. De Niro made Scorsese read Brandt's book, and development began in 2007. The project was stuck in development hell for years, while Scorsese made other films. Pesci was reportedly offered his role 50 times before accepting it, leaving retirement for it. The film is the first collaboration of Scorsese and Pacino. Shooting took place for 108 days from August 2017 - March 2018 in New Jersey, New York and in Florida, including Miami. The budget rose from a projected 100 mil. $ to 125 mil. $, which Netflix put up, to 140 mil. $ due to CGI costs, - to finally, reportedly, 159 mil. $. The film's truthfulness is contested. Netflix has asserted that around 16 % of its account-holders, around 26 mil. people, have watched at least 70 % of the film on their platform. It is Netflix's biggest theatrical release in North America and globally to date, but most of the gross numbers are not, as other major US releases, made public. The reason for the film's small theatrical engagement is that Netflix refuses to align with an exclusivity 'window' for theaters before films hit streaming and video, which is otherwise standard. The film is estimated to have made 6.7 mil. $ (89.3 % of the total gross) in North America with its 2nd and 3rd biggest markets made public being the Netherlands with 623k $ (8.3 %) and South Korea with 209k $ (2.8 %), - however most markets are unreported. The film is nominated for 5 Golden Globes, won an AFI award, 2 National Board of Review awards and several other honors. It has been voted in at #145 on IMDb's user-generated Top 250, currently sitting between Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). Scorsese is set to return with Killers of the Flower Moon (2021), a period crime drama with De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio. De Niro returns in The War with Grandpa (2020); Pacino in Axis Sally and Pesci is not announced for anything new, likely heading back to retirement. The Irishman is certified fresh at 96 % with a 8.87/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of The Irishman?
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