The Irishman: Englishman and a Scotsman walk into a bar and three hours later they start contemplating their own existence.
Martin Scorsese’s latest movie is a masterpiece in character lead story telling. It is a tad long yes, but that is how long it takes to tell an almost entire and extraordinary life of the lead character Frank Sheeran (no relation apparently). Played by a man who needs little introduction, Robert De Niro who, unsurprisingly, really delivered with this performance. When you then back that up with stellar performances from Joe Pesci, Al Pacino and Stephen Graham it’s very hard to go wrong.
Hoooooowever ... I’m definitely one for slow paced, long scenes of epic dialogue, heck I even enjoyed Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but I do have to admit that even I was limping to the finishing line with this one. But this wasn’t an issue with lazy editing, no. The reason why I think this film was verging on the tedious was this whole de-aging fad. This coming from a man (Scorsese) who has caused huge
controversy with Marvel fans saying their beloved movies are more “theme park rides than real cinema.” The hypocrisy of it is maddening. The technology itself, even though it’s putting actors like me out of work, isn’t the issue. It was actually pretty good in this film and didn’t distract too much. The problem I had with it is they de-age the face but they can’t de-age how an actor moves. In scenes when a “younger” Frank is threatening and being physical with people who cross him and his family, unfortunately Robert De Niro’s movement was laughable. When you take the threat and the danger out of a movie like this, scenes lose tension and drive, so even the best dialogue and acting can’t stop you thinking “but it looks like a light breeze would knock him down ....” This is why this film for me will always pale in comparison to Goodfellas or The Godfather when these actors were in their prime. Just use younger actors to play the characters younger selves! That way you can establish these aggressive mafia dons early on so when you do have scenes of long dialogue with the older actors they have more potency.
I did still very much enjoy large parts of this movie. My favourite scene where Stephen Grahams character Tony is late for a meeting Pacino and from interviews I've seen I know a lot of that scene was improvised and it's lovely to see the actors have some real fun with it. I can happily give it a solid 8/10, but as I said it won’t be going down in the history books as one of the all time greats in my opinion. In fact it’s not even the best film of the year, which is still held by ‘Joker.’ Being on Netflix however does make it very accessible, so I would highly recommend sitting down with some popcorn and once again just hash it out with our “old” friends Scorsese and De Niro.
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