Clocking in at nearly three-and-a-half hours, the great Martin Scorsese directs Robert De Niro in this epic true crime biography penned by the Oscar-winning writer of Schindler's List. De Niro is digitally de-aged as real-life mob hitman Frank Sheeran, who recalls his possible involvement with the slaying of Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). Joe Pesci co-stars (in his first role since 2010) along with Oscar winner Anna Paquin, her The Piano co-star Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano, Jesse Plemons and Bobby Cannavale.
95%458 reviews
While the experience of watching these senior cinema titans come together with such late-career gusto does partially elicit a nostalgic Goodfellas: Endgame vibe about it, the film is ultimately a richly layered, deliberately pensive dismantling of the myth and swagger generally associated with its creator’s iconic gangster opuses. The Irishman is, indeed, Scorsese’s daggiest movie to date, drunk on pangs of resignation and regret.
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It’s actually closer in tone to Silence, Scorsese’s contemplative 2016 film about Jesuit priests in 17th-century Japan. Which is befitting to the ageing gentleman behind it, and if one is prepared to sit quietly and do some work then The Irishman is a fine film. Because Marty’s not doing all the work for us.
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While perhaps falling short of being a classic and not to everyone's taste (there are some unhappy at its version of the events relating to Hoffa), there's no doubting that The Irishman feels like a welcome throwback to pre-blockbuster event cinema of the 1970s, when the focus was on compelling characters and stories, rather than explosions and superheroes.
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From the opening tracking shot and accompanying song – a la Mean Streets – we are reminded that we’re in vintage Martin Scorsese territory here. But the self-referential elements are sparing, appropriate and – like everything else about this phenomenal movie – pitch-perfect.
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The Irishman is pure cinema, all three and a half hours of it – and one of Scorsese’s jazziest, most difficult films, borrowing from many sources while riffling freely though often mournfully on the themes and techniques of his previous crime epics Goodfellas and Casino.
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I found myself reluctantly taken by the movie, and the way Scorsese uses it to maybe, just a little bit, atone for some of his own past blitheness about violence.
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The Irishman is vintage Scorsese, with an often sinuously moving camera, occasional break-the-fourth-wall monologues, wicked wise-guy humour, and explosions of sudden tenderness and casual violence.
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There's an almost meta-maturity, as if Scorsese is also looking back on his own career, the film leaving us with a haunting reminder not to glamorise violent men and the wreckage they leave behind.
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Martin Scorsese's "The Irishman" is a coldly enthralling, long-form knockout - a majestic Mob epic with ice in its veins.
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A monument is a complicated thing. This one is big and solid - and also surprisingly, surpassingly delicate.
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Martin Scorsese, reunites with his most totemic screen actor to tell a sprawling gangland saga that's by turns flinty, amusing and richly nostalgic.
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After a while, you adjust, or rather, you get tired of probing the slightly-off evidence of your eyes and the headache it produces. There's a lot of fun to distract you.
Full reviewThe Irishman is available to stream in New Zealand now on Netflix.
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