I’d put off watching ‘The Irishman’ due to its infamous length of over three hours, but having watched it in two sessions it just flew by and it’s certainly one you should look up. That said it could have done with some serious editing with a lot of stuff padded out, or not really necessary to tell the story.
The Irishman of the title is Frank Sheeran, a hit man and union leader played by Robert De Niro. We meet him at first in an old folks home where he’s recounting his story to an unseen person. His story dissolves to a flashback where he, Joe Pesci and their wives are heading to a wedding. Their car breaks down and De Niro and Pesci reminisce about how they first met. So the flashback becomes a further flashback to the days when De Niro was a truck driver and Pesci a gang boss.
De Niro soon rises through the ranks of the local mob by ‘painting houses’ a euphemism for whacking people, normally with a couple of shots in the back of the head meaning their walls get a nice bit of decoration. Pesci's mob boss works closely with the Teamsters trucking union which is run by Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) and De Niro is loaned to him to help out with some business. He later becomes a union organiser himself and as the years pass we witness their involvement in the Bay of Pigs and Kennedy assassination amongst other dubious events.
Meanwhile De Niro is estranged from his four daughters, mainly because he’s such a big psycho that beats up the local grocer and for all the murders. The pivotal event of the film is the famous disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa and it is covered in some detail. Seemingly the facts are disputed but the film certainly hitches its wagon to real life confession of Frank.
We meet loads of other gangsters and the film helpfully adds captions giving their names and how they met their demise - not many died of natural causes! Eventually we are back in the care home with De Niro nearing the end of his days with all his contemporaries having gone before him. Can he find redemption from the church and can he reconcile with his family?
This was a great film that was very much in the same style as ‘Goodfellas’ and ‘Casino’. I don’t think it was as good as those films, but they do set a high mark. Essentially you get a trip through 40 years of gangland violence and racketeering set against the soundtrack of the time. It is well documented that the three leads were de-aged by computer and the effect was generally good. I didn’t buy that the 70 year old plus actors were in their 40s but they certainly didn’t look their years.
The sets and costumes were great and the evocation of the eras depicted was well done. The film was too long however, and I think it could have been boiled down to two hours or at least turned into a 4 part mini series. The depiction of Hoffa’s last hours went on for an age and I don’t see what all the talk of a fish did to help the flow of the scenes. You could say it built tension, but I was losing interest as they rambled on about whether it was a cod or halibut.
There were some great supporting performances too with people like Stephen Graham, Jessie Plemons, Bobbie Cannavale and an under used Harvey Keitel all getting a look in.
Overall the film is worth the investment of your time. I think director Martin Scorsese was probably given too much of a free hand as the film was allowed to ramble and go off into irrelevant tangents, so maybe a non-director’s cut is the one to look out for!
Best Bit : Grocer gets checked out 75%
