The Irishman

There are always limits and a generous bit of speculation involved when attaching a real-world narrative to an artist’s work or career. Having said that, one can see parallels between Martin Scorsese’s career and his forays into the gangster genre. Mean Streets, his 1973 breakthrough, came when he was a hungry young filmmaker. The world it showed was full of danger and violence, but it looked so cool and exciting and sexy. Goodfellas and Casino came as Scorsese reached middle age. There’s a no-longer-young man’s longing relish to the hedonism in those movies and a feeling of “Remember when?” (in between the scenes of horrific bloodshed and brutality). The Departed…finally won him an overdue Oscar (like I said, limits; I love The Departed, though).

Now in his upper-70s, Scorsese has no plans to retire as far as I know (though he is admittedly showing his age some with this tiresome war of words between him and Marvel). But his long-gestating The Irishman definitely has the perspective of a filmmaker in his autumn years. This isn’t a ride through the “glory days” like his previous gangster pics; what glimpses we see of the old days here are fleeting, somber, and absolutely not glorious. This one’s about what comes after those days, where men in power desperately cling to it as their time passes (a metaphor for mortality if ever there was one).

The Irishman of the title refers to Frank Sheeran, an Eastern Pennsylvania Teamsters Union official and the subject of the book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt. Before his death in 2003, Sheeran claimed to have been a hit man for the mafia who hobnobbed with famous underworld figures and tangentially or directly participated in major mob hits and historical moments. The film casts Robert De Niro as Sheeran (digitally de-aging him as the era calls for it) and follows his (alleged) decades-long relationship with the mob and the Teamsters, specifically Buffalino family head Russell Buffalino (Joe Pesci) and Teamsters Union President Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino).

Let’s get this out of the way: the picture does not need to be this long (a whopping three-and-a-half hours, with no intermission). A few sequences could have simply been cut, and the movie better for it. Short scenes of Sheeran’s path crossing with history are mostly just superfluous, but one in particular comes out of nowhere and offers little explanation or context. It’s as if they felt they needed to insert someone getting whacked to remind viewers who might tail off that this is still a gangster picture, but the anecdote’s significance will be lost upon those unfamiliar with mob history. Also, the last half-hour or so is obvious and, frankly, a little sloppy, and comes after the main arc of the story reaches its perfect conclusion.

Those bits aside, the heart of the picture—the conflict between Hoffa and the mob and mobbed-up Teamster rivals, with Sheeran floating in the middle—is mesmerizing. Even without the crackerjack style and bravura sequences Scorsese usually brings (the cocaine-fueled errand run in Goodfellas, or any one of half-a-dozen inappropriate parts in The Wolf of Wall Street), the film never bores. Steven Zaillian’s script sizzles, capturing the viewer and building more dread in simple conversation than any scene of bloodshed. Despite the grimness, it’s also often funny, the wordplay shifting unexpectedly from tension to laugh-out-loud levity, and just as starkly going back again (and a running motif of providing supporting and tertiary players with captions showing their names and date and method of death becomes humorous as it goes on). The period production looks sharp, too, and the much-hyped de-aging effects blend in seamlessly (at least they did on my HDTV).

The cast is a mile-long murderers’ row, with great supporting roles from Stephen Graham, Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano (terrific at playing things serious while also bringing some of his comedy chops when appropriate), Bobby Cannavale, Dominic Lombardozzi, and too many bit parts to list. Pacino gives one of his career-best performances. His more flamboyant late-career style gets so much parody and criticism (unfairly, if you ask me), but it fits this role perfectly, as he plays Hoffa as a megalomaniacal blowhard at war with everyone around him, and yet undoubtedly and unceasingly charismatic. And Pesci gives probably his very best performance, contrasting his normal motormouthed brutality with a turn more restrained and soft-spoken on the surface, but undoubtedly fearsome and Machiavellian closer in. In a few scenes, his laconic, almost grandfatherly demeanor is nearly more intimidating than when he was violently psychotic in Casino or Goodfellas.

De Niro is, predictably, strong in the title role (as if you’d expect anything less). The only knock against him is that he gets upstaged by Pesci, Pacino, and others, to the point where he practically becomes a supporting or even bit player for large chunks of the proceedings. Because of this, his Sheeran seems a bit of a cypher, merely the hook into the more interesting story of Hoffa and the mob, and one of the less interesting players in it. That, and the recurring subplot of his estranged daughter (Lucy Gallina as a child, Anna Paquin as an adult, both offering little more than icy stares) is underdeveloped. One could argue the lack of connection with the character is the point, to underline Sheeran’s distance from his daughter, but it’s never given time to develop into anything compelling or affecting to the audience, either (though I’m reluctant to suggest this movie should be longer).

The Irishman isn’t quite the Götterdämmerung of the gangster genre (no one’s done that better than The Godfather Part II 45 years ago), but it is a great one. It’s also arguably where the career parallels break away from Scorsese’s mob movies. The film posits that the “good old days” were pretty horrible, actually, and those who make it out alive only look back in despair and have nothing to be proud of in their old age. The exact opposite is true for Scorsese.