The Irishman
Martin Scorsese's The Irishman marks Netflix's continued push in 2019 to try to win the biggest award in American Cinema. 2018's Roma saw many accolades after having a limited release in order for Netflix to gain eligibility in the Academy Awards. Now, Netflix has purchased their own cinemas to show these films, and the $150 Million+ budget for the film shows that Scorsese, who is a constant critic of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, will use all the same technologies and fantasies if given a green light.
The Irishman purports to be the story of the coming up, life, and actions of the man who killed Jimmy Hoffa. First, one must acknowledge that the narrator is less reliable than a tabloid cover article. The story is based on "confessions" of a killer, given before his death and to only one person, who then monetized all that. Motives should always be considered when discussing the veracity of a narrator's story. The hitman in the movie is also only one of many who claims to be "THE ONE" who killed Jimmy Hoffa. Seeing as all of them cannot be telling the truth, yet no one can prove who is, the viewer is left to wonder.
The acting of the film, as expected, is excellent. However, with two guys who have literally played the Godfather in Godfather movies (Pacino as Michael Corleone in all three and De Niro as a young version of his father, Vito, in Part II) playing a German-American and Irish-American, respectively, in a mob movie is a little distracting, no matter actual heritage. It is a Scorsese mob movie with mob actors, of course they can play the part, they have done it their entire careers. Pesci shines in his role and is definitely deserving of his acting nomination.
For the movie itself, there is a lot there, A LOT. This movie was broken into three viewings for my wife and me due to its length and general lack of action. The story is framed mostly as flashbacks while De Niro and Pesci are traveling across the country a bit with their wives on the way to a wedding, but really to murder Pacino. The use of these flashbacks and the de-aging and increased-aging technologies is deployed powerfully for the most part. Performances are stellar all the way through, even if you have trouble buying them in a particular role due to their presence calling you back to previous roles, and there are compelling pieces. Sheeran's (De Niro) relationship with his family and, especially, one of his daughters, keeps the viewer from fully glorifying the treacherous work done throughout the film, while showing just a hint of emotional conflict in the film's main character.
The film includes lots of fraud, intimidation, manipulation, and violence. The humanizing of the perpetrators allows the viewer to be reminded that even people who do terrible things are human and that we should also be weary of assuming to fully know someone's motives, even if the seem obvious. However, one could argue that it is this very humanization that occasionally straddles the line of glorifying the life of organized crime. The fact that they all end up locked up and/or dead is the only time we see glimpses of remorse for a life poorly lived.
As a conversation starter, this movie certainly has plenty to talk about in terms of truth-telling, both in the story itself and how it is told and with the characters who live therein, the importance of considering the consequences of one's actions, and on the nature of motives, again both in the making of the film and in the film itself. In all the film's flashbacks, the viewer sees the development of De Niro's character and his true friendship with Pacino, and the real betrayal of a friend. One must add, though, that it is not hard to have chemistry on screen with ones actual friends and that this review continues to use the actors' names rather than the characters', because that is what it felt like watching the film.
If you have Netflix or resources to rent/buy digitally, along with several hours, give this a shot. You will at least find yourself able to discuss one of the big critical films of the year, as well as Scorsese's need to leave everyone alone about big budget films that are just made to be there, as this story neither needed told nor given so much money to tell it. My personal suggestion: watch The Godfather: Part II, which is a better put together use of the same type of storytelling with two of the actors as the same characters.