The Irishman - Review

The Irishman

Legendary (for me he is) Oscar winning Director Martin Scorsese, along with a stellar cast that includes two time Oscar winner Robert DeNiro, Oscar winner Al Pacino and Oscar winner Joe Pesci in the highly anticipated NEFLIX produced film called “The Irishman”. A 2019 epic crime film written by Steven Zaillian (“Moneyball” and Schindler’s List”) and is based on the 2004 book “I Heard You Paint Houses”. The film also stars Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Paquin, Stephen Graham, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Jesse Plemons (FX’s Fargo 3 and Breaking Bad) and Harvey Keitel in supporting roles.

Running 3:30 minutes the film mostly follows “Frank Sheeran” (DeNiro), a World War 2 Veteran who comes home to be a meat slaughter house truck driver. One day through the coincidence of his truck breaking down at a roadside dinner - Texaco gas station he encounters a man who in a random act of kindness helps him fix the truck. That meeting eventually leads “Frank” to becoming a reliable and trusted hitman for the mob, exclusively working for the real life mobster “Russell Bufalino” (Pesci) and his crime family. Of his many duties “to paint houses” (mob code to “contract kill someone”) “Frank’s” other duties included providing some criminal muscle (when needed) by the then nationally powerful Teamster Truckers Union President Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino).  

REVIEW: Scorsese once again captures the same magic of his previously acclaimed mob films in ‘GoodFellas” and “ Casino”, only in this effort it feels more like something that rarely happens in my movie going experiences. Specifically, telling a real life story spanning from the 1940s to the 1970’s through the back drop of historical events (i.e. Cuban Bay of Pigs Invasion and Kennedy Assassination) and with the use of some impressive software technology to make actors look younger to incredible youthful detail, “The Irishman” is an epic story bathed in cinematic grandeur, sumptuousness, steeliness and splendor. “The Irishman" is clearly the best film I have seen all year.  

Through an assuredly Best Adapted Screenplay nomination coming it’s way in January 2020, one that is probably a written combination of fact based events and dialogue and other parts creative licensing to infuse some strategic heighten drama, the whole experience of this film itself created a feeling of being “a listening fly” on the wall where the words are rich, intense, purposeful, always in the moment and simply something gloriously audible to have experience.

I would be shocked if the film, Director Scorsese and the three lead actors don’t all receive respective Oscar nominations. And while DeNiro’s chrarcter dominates the film and the story itself, it is Joe Pesci who reluctantly came out retirement and his passion to playing golf daily that is clearly the most memorable performance in the film.

In his previous roles in “Goodfellas” and “Casino”, Pesci played two highly volatile and disturbingly violent murderous psychopaths, but in his “Russell Bufalino” this might be the culmination of his entire career. His works here is no less menacing and less foreboding but here more sophisticatedly measured………… in that friendly avuncular – your favorite uncle down the street kind of way.  He is more dignified, more refined, even civilized to friends and his enemies. But when it’s time for him to order to have someone’s “house painted” he is still, maybe even more so no less terrifying to watch, unlike in the past with his noted spontaneous eruption of hotheadedness………. “Waddya mean I’m funny ;  I make you laugh? I’m here to fuckin’ amuse you? Waddya mean “funny”? Funny how? How am I funny”. When his “Russell” gets angry or ever is disappointed you can feel him soberly, coldly, succinctly make the decision for that person to go away. Brilliant work here.

There is so, so, so much to enjoy about “The Irishman”. The way they operate in an alternate universe completely immune and devoid of local police involvement or accountability. The coded ways they talk about their business related problems so as not to say too much but still making their point fully known to all. Their hand gestures and body gesticulation to have meaning never to be misunderstood. To see literally grown men bend over backwards with adolescent emotion and posture with one another so as never to subtly offend anyone, not even a minuscule sign of disrespect. And finally the patriarchal family dynamics by men who are violent and murderous and yet still have a deep abiding protective love for their families, culture, food and the “la gioia di vivere’ aka their “joy of living”.

“The Irishman” is phenomenal film making. A story about people who willing agreed to come together of their own free will to operate with one another with ruthlessness, brutality and violence. Not fictional characters but real life men who are just as much a part of the historical footnotes of the American 20th century as the moon landing and the invention of the atom bomb. Only their footnote and their claim to fame were being some of the most notorious and infamous people ever in America if not the entire world has ever seen.

4.00 Stars
On NETFLIX November 27th