Movie Reaction: The Irishman

Formula: Goodfellas - time to reflect

Like it or not, Martin Scorsese has earned the benefit of the doubt. He's been working for half a century and, in any decade, has put together a better filmograpgy than most filmmakers would make in a lifetime. I've seen most of his movies at this point. Not all of them are my favorites. I love Goodfellas, The Departed, and Hugo. I can't think of any of his movies that I've outright hated, although it sometimes feels like his early movies (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) get a little overrated by the public. So, of course I was excited for his next movie.

...But, good god am I tired of the noise around it. Nearly everything about The Irishman has become a storyline. The massive budget (reportedly $140 million). The CGI de-aging of its stars. The fact that it's being released on Netflix without a proper theatrical release. Joe Pesci coming out of retirement. The asinine debate surrounding Scorsese's comments about Marvel movies. The 3.5 hour runtime. I can't think of a movie that I heard so much about in the lead up that didn't even have to do with the plot. Enough has been said about this movie, so I'll try (and fail) to keep it simple.

The Irishman covers the life of Frank Sheeran, who was closely linked to the mafia and the Teamsters from the 1950s until his death. In particular, it focuses on his close relationship with Jimmy Hoffa. For all intents and purposes, yes, this is another Scorsese gangster movie. Frank often works as a hitman for the mob. There's a lot of dirty money and violence throughout.

It is clear that Scorsese is trying to do something a little different with this movie though. Instead of revelling in the gangster lifestyle the way that Goodfellas does, The Irishman takes a sober and detached look at it. All the infighting and backstabbing takes its toll. Everything that seemed so important at the time ends up forgotten, and the things Frank takes for granted aren't still be there when he needs them. The big debate about this movie is that it's too long. I see the need for the length. The movie relies on an accumulation of experiences. We need to see relationships through from beginning to middle to end for everything to sink in the way it needs to. The movie is structured around a very old Frank in a nursing home telling his story. He doesn't seem to be telling the story to anyone in particular. He's just a lonely old man who wants to believe that everything he did still matters. And that doesn't hit as well without the weight of the time spent. That said, it didn't hit me hard enough to justify the 3.5 hours*.

*There's a fuzzy math I like to do to justify seeing a movie rather than reading a book. Let's say it takes 6 hours to read the book and the movie is only 2 hours long. If the movie is even just 50% as good as the book, then I'm getting more value per minute out of the time spent watching the movie than if I'd read the book. Applying a similar math to The Irishman, I think the dropoff in thematic impact by cutting the movie down to 2.5 hours, wouldn't be more significant that the amount of time cut out of the movie. In other words, the 3.5 hour cut is an 8/10 for me. The 2.5 hour cut would maybe be a 6.5/10. That's a 30% cut in time for only a 20% dip in quality. This is, of course, stupid math, and is a bad way to look at art. It does, however, make my point in the most basic way.

I can't believe that I've gone this long without mentioning Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. They're actually on screen together a lot (unlike The Godfather Part II and Heat). De Niro is fine in the movie. He didn't blow me away. I think that was the function of the character. He's mostly someone for the other guys to bounce off. It's De Niro's best work in years, only it's for a character that sort of bored me. This is the best I've seen Pacino in...decades. He plays Jimmy Hoffa and actually shows some restraint. That's been Pacino's problem for a while. He always goes too big. Well, Hoffa is a similarly large personality, which actually leaves Pacino some room for some human moments too. Joe Pesci plays De Niro's mentor in the mob. I love seeing Pesci on the screen again. It's a much less menacing Pesci than I remember though. For years, he made his name as either the angry man with a Napoleon complex or as the loud-mouthed funny guy. In The Irishman, he's calmer and more contemplative. He'd rather say something with a look than with words. I'm firmly in the Pacino camp when it comes to who should get the Oscar nomination though. There are a lot of other people who show up that you'll recognize if you've seen any of Scorsese's movies or the shows he's produced on HBO. I won't start the list, but let's just agree that they all fill their roles nicely. No one in particular jumped out.

This is a technically impressive movie. It better be for how much it cost. The period detail is solid. It never felt like they scrimped on a location scout. It's a loaded soundtrack of period-appropriate needle drops. The big story, of course, is the de-aging technology. They take 20-30 years off De Niro and Pesci (and others) at different points in the movie. It isn't seamless. You can tell that some computers are doing some work. At no point did I buy that De Niro passed for mid-40s even. That said, it isn't super distracting either. I quickly accepted it the same way I do with a decent make-up job in a movie that needs an actor to cover a large swath of time.

My stance on The Irishman is that it's good, not great. It's right in the middle of the pack in Scorsese's filmography. I'm glad he got to make it though, because it's a fitting final chapter for Scorsese's most distinctive genre. It functions as the other side of the Goodfellas/Casino story. And if anyone has earned the chance to burn $140 million on a career retrospective meditation, it's Martin Scorsese.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend