The Irishman Reviews

The Irishman finds Martin Scorsese once again in a sprawling crime saga, but this one is in a more muted key than previously explorations of this genre. Not to say that large portions of the film don’t have the energy of GoodFellas or Casino, but The Irishman is an overall more reflective and funereal work than those films. It is something akin to a confessional from a tortured soul seeking absolution.

Or maybe it’s the ramblings of an elderly man who is unreliable both as narrator of his own life and as witness to mob violence. Based upon Charles Brandt’s I Heard You Paint Houses, we’re introduced to Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) in a retirement home and loop back to this as he word vomits out his life story starting in the mid-40s to the early-00s. It is a smart framing device as it continually reframes events that happen with the regret and the unintended consequences that have weighed his life down in the interim.

Yet Sheeran still seems incapable of completing the journey of self-reflection towards lessons learned. He gets only so far but is still in some denial about how his lifestyle and decisions have alienated the family he claims to love, especially his older daughter Peggy (Anna Paquin). The ending coda, where Sheeran asks that his door be left slight ajar, provides a full circle as Sheeran has adopted one of Jimmy Hoffa’s idiosyncrasies as a self-protective gesture yet drained of his power, real or imagined.

It is fascinating in how Scorsese knows that in getting the band back together (De Niro, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel) audiences expect a return to past successes. As if preemptively expecting this, Scorsese weaves this strand into the larger narrative as Sheeran’s remembrances are tinged with a halo effect and perhaps a touch of revisionism. There’s a stronger sense of time’s inevitability as these glory days are delivered as after-the-fact and counterposed by choices which undercut them, like text displaying inevitable fates and black humor.

There’s a lot of narrative ground covered, but the central conceit is a trio of relationships struggling for power and ideology. There’s Sheeran in the middle with Hoffa and Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) struggling for influence and using Sheeran as a pawn. Pesci’s muted acting style is a great counterbalance to Pacino’s histrionics and aggressive masculinity. It's impossible to imagine the film working as well as it does without their grindlock and head-butting.

On the periphery is Anna Paquin’s largely mute performance but one that is weighed by the Sphinx-like facial expression she wears. Her Peggy is the silent observer and moral compass of the film. Paquin broadcasts a mercurial presence that both casting judgment upon her father and recoiling in horror at his very presence. One of the strongest scenes in the film is when Paquin breaks her silence and delivers words that aren’t remarkable on the surface but are loaded with subtextual rage and meaning.  

Every time we loop back to Sheeran in old age in the retirement home, it becomes a kind of purgatory where cleansing benediction for his is not forthcoming. He is a man left alone with only his memories, yet he seems incapable of actively getting redemption for his sins. Scorsese’s late-career masterpiece may be a last hurrah for all involved, but what a distressingly complicated and downbeat note to go out on. This is what a true auteur looks like.

Of course, like many other movie buffs, I had been anxiously waiting for this movie. Indeed, after almost 25 years, Martin Scorsese was working again with Robert De Niro on a massive gangster epic involving an impressive cast including the likes of Al Pacino. I mean, this combo Scorsese-De Niro-Pacino sounded already like movie heaven and when the critics turned out to be wild enthusiast, my expectations went sky high. Well, eventually, I find it rather difficult to judge this movie after all and, to be honest, I wasn’t really blown like I was expecting to be. First of all, even though the CGI deaging of the main cast had pretty much doubled the costs of the production, I didn’t feel it was really convincing. Seriously, I was constantly wondering what age their characters were supposed to be and it was pretty obvious through the whole duration that all the actors (Robert de Niro (75), Al Pacino (78) and Joe Pesci (75)) were so much older than their respective characters. Even if ‘Gemini Man’ was a major flop and a rather average action flick, at least, the 20 year old version of Will Smith was just mindblowing to behold. Concerning the character themselves, I thought that Russell Bufalino was actually the most interesting one. Indeed, if Al Pacino delivered a solid performance, to be honest, Jimmy Hoffa felt rather clueless or at least really reckless considering the way he handled the threats from the mob. Concerning Frank Sheeran, De Niro was fine as well but I was missing some kind of drive behind his actions. Still, even if this story might seem to be pretty basic, it was not a simple movie, especially due to the fact that it was Scorsese’s longest movie so far and I think I would need to rewatch it at some point to make up my mind for good about the damned thing. Anyway, to conclude, even if I wasn’t completely sold, this gangster flick from Martin Scorsese was still miles better than most of the movies that came out this year and it is definitely worth a look.