Film Review: The Irishman
The Last Mob Movie
The Irishman, Martin Scorsese’s latest gangland epic, is a somber and morose journey through the life of Bufalino hitman Frank Sheeran. Based on the real Sheeran’s biography “I Heard You Paint Houses,” the film is a measured departure from Scorsese’s past filmography and the genre he helped revolutionize; the mob movie to end all mob movies, The Irishman is a masterful exploration of tragedy and the gravity of regret. Mild spoilers ahead…
In Martin Scorsese’s 1990 gangster epic Goodfellas, there is a oner that has since become iconic - a tracking shot with such a reputation that it’s even been given a nickname: “The Copa Shot.” In a single three-minute take, doors are literally and figuratively opened as Karen Friedman (Lorraine Bracco) accompanies mafioso neophyte Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) through the Copacabana night club. As audience surrogate, Karen is launched through a sensual introduction to Henry’s lifestyle - a dizzying waltz through the glitz and glamor afforded by a life of organized crime. The Irishman, Scorsese’s latest, also opens with somewhat of a tracking shot, but instead of touring the gilded opulence of the Copacabana, the lens lethargically cruises through the graying walls of a nursing home, turning corners and hallways before ultimately settling on the withered and weathered hands of an elderly Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro). Just from this opening alone, one realizes that The Irishman is going to be a different kind of mob movie. The rest of the film follows suit; somber and subdued, Scorsese underlines a truth touched upon in earlier projects, but never fully explored until now: in this wicked game of organized crime, there are way more losers than winners. More likely to be shot in the face on a street corner than to be able to revel in the extravagance of excess, the mobster is one that pays his dues in blood, loneliness, and regret.
With a crooked portrait of Americana as its backdrop, The Irishman centers around Frank Sheeran as he dutifully climbs the ranks of the Bufalino crime family. A quiet three-and-a-half hour epic, the film shares more DNA with 2016’s Silence - Scorsese’s tragic meditation on struggling Catholicism in feudal Japan - than either Goodfellas or Casino, replacing their bells and whistles in favor of a more sullen reflection. Author Charles Brandt’s biography of Sheeran primarily functions as a confessional dosed with sensationalism - namely, an examination of his subject’s role in the disappearance of bombastic Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa. While the work itself is largely disputed with some nearly unbelievable facts, Scorsese translates Brandt’s pages to screen matter-of-factly, with earmarks of history conveying the passage of time. From his time in World War II to his ascendancy to Bufalino cleaner and muscle, The Irishman spans decades of Sheeran’s life as the vestiges of humanity are stripped from him, one by one.
“At 209 minutes, The Irishman is indeed long, but far from boring or impenetrable.”
At 209 minutes, The Irishman is indeed long, but far from boring or impenetrable. Anchored by an intersection of tremendous performances, the film explores Frank and his relationship with the two men that would end up defining him: Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) and Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). De Niro plays Sheeran with an enervating magnetism, and is as reserved as he has ever been. Donning a shell of lumbering but quiet intensity, it’s easy to buy the 76 year-old thespian as a has-been enforcer awash with guilt and remorse. Sheeran is typically front and center when it comes to the film’s quick and sanguine depictions of violence, but unlike Scorsese’s other crime films, there’s little theatrical glee accompanying these gangland executions. It’s a testament to De Niro’s abilities that, with each act of killing, you can see fragments of himself falling from his face. Such murders are typically at the behest of Russell Bufalino, head of the Northeastern Pennsylvania crime family. In the film’s other standout performance, Joe Pesci as Bufalino is a revelation; a far cry from his wisecracking, motor-mouthed, hustler roles of his heyday, Pesci portrays the steely crime boss as a curious paradox. A frightening man who commands rooms with nary a whisper, Pesci’s Russell Bufalino is detached, warm, authoritative, and terrifying - all at the same time. Al Pacino is also pitch-perfect in capturing the bombast and pigheadedness of Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa, even if he veers closer to the familiarity of his own wheelhouse than his co-stars. There was some consternation before the film’s release concerning the decision to use CGI to de-age the cast, but the effect is largely flawless in the end. Instead of descending into cartoonishly exaggerated youth (as these effects sometimes do), the de-aging captures a younger De Niro and a younger Pesci with subtlety and grace - to its credit, it’s never distracting.
The Irishman’s poignance is largely elegiac, exploring one man’s internal conflict with friendship and loyalty while his life detonates around him. Where Goodfellas, Casino, and to a certain extent, The Departed act as live-wire crime epics, The Irishman mimics a mournful wake: a dark coda for an entire genre of film. The film also lands some surprise gut punches, mostly in the form of Frank’s daughter Peggy (Anna Paquin as an adult, Lucy Gallina as a child). A mostly wordless part, it’s a role that has caught a fair amount of flack for its perceived thinness - as yet another formidable actress saddled with an undercooked character - but like Margot Robbie’s Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood before them, Gallina and Paquin land the film’s most emotionally devastating blows with presence rather than words. From fear, to anger, to a silently powerful rebuke, Peggy Sheeran acts as the film’s yardstick for morality.
Martin Scorsese may be putting the mob epic to rest, but the 77 year-old auteur is hardly in the twilight of his career. In some ways, the film works as both a wistful retrospective and a forward-looking evolution. It may not reach the highest highs of his storied filmography, but The Irishman explores a morose poetry rarely seen in Scorsese’s works. In the end, it is a film much more than the sum of its long 209 minutes: The Irishman looks inwards and acts as a sorrowful dismantling of one’s own myth-making.
