‘The Irishman' is Martin Scorsese's Eulogy to Gangster Cinema [Review]

[Review Originally posted at the New York Film Festival on 9.27.19]

Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” starts off with a tracking shot down a hallway, much like the Copacabana take in “Goodfellas,” except this one ends with a close-up of a geriatric and wheelchair-bound Robert De Niro. It’s no coincidence that Scorsese decided to open his movie with this shot as if to tell us this is the end of the road for the goombahs he has so legendarily depicted in classics such as “Mean Streets,” “Goodfellas” and “Casino.” It’s a potent wakeup call for the viewer that this will not be your usual Scorsese-directed mob movie.

“The Irishman” is an adaptation of Charles Brandt’s “I Heard You Paint Houses,” a 2004 memoir written by the former investigator-turned-author who chronicled the life of a mafia hitman who allegedly confessed to the murders of both Jimmy Hoffa and, take this with a grain a salt, John F. Kennedy Jr.

The hitman in question was Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro, subdued but highly effective), a meat-packing truck-driving deliveryman who ends up connecting with Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci), a well-connected New York City fixer who knows anybody and everybody in the world of crime. Bufalino soon connects Sheeran with Teamster union president, Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino in a firecracker of a performance), as they form a partnership which launches them both into legal and personal problems. Hoffa has enemies, including the president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, whose brother is appointed as attorney general to investigate Hoffa’s shady dealings. Multiple lawsuits ensue against Hoffa, with payoffs, bribes, and blackmail attempted by Sheeran to fix his boss’ problems.

In a way, Sheeran is Hoffa’s clean-up guy, a man who will do anything and everything to protect his good friend. On the sidelines, Bufalino is worried about Sheeran’s close friendship with a man who is destined to not only go to jail but get whacked by the wrong people. In that regard, Bufalino is Sheeran’s own fixer. This continuous back-and-forth between these three men is at the core of “The Irishman,” a meditative and contemplative study of the themes that Scorsese has tackled endlessly during the course of his astonishing five-decade career.

The movie unfolds in five acts, narrated over several decades by a geriatric Sheeran: There’s Frank being introduced to a world of crime courtesy of local mobster, Felix "Skinny Razor" DiTullio (Bobby Cannavale), and Pesci’s Bufalino; there’s Sheeran becoming a ruthless hitman for the Italian mob; then Sheeran being introduced and then mentored by Hoffa; and finally the inevitable downfall and then the elegiac epilogue. If this reads like a TV mini-series well it’s because “The Irishman” does feel like it at times. Yes, its 210 minutes flew by very quickly, but Scorsese's choice to make this a standalone movie and not a limited series is mildly disappointing. He supposedly shot more than 6 hours of footage and, at times, it does feel like there are key scenes missing.

And yet, despite clocking in at close to 3 and a half hours, "The Irishman" never feels slow or out-of-breath, which is a testament to Thelma Schoonmaker's exquisite editing, juggling all the timelines together in ways that never let up — this is a high-wire act of editing from a legendary woman responsible for the greatest edited movie of all-time (Raging Bull). And yet, Scorsese, no slouch himself, shoots the film in magisterial ways, inspired, much like he was in his last feature, “Silence,” by a Bresson-ian brand of cinema: the ellipses, the minor use of music (a simple, yearnful harmonica drives the score home), and more intriguingly, the somber minimalism in both the acting and directing. De Niro and Pesci are so good that their work here can easily be dismissed in favor of Pacino’s more showy performance, but don’t be fooled, these are all masters working at the top of their craft.

Meanwhile, Scorsese uses his cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto’s sorrowful photography to not glamorize the violence being shown on-screen but to turn the bloodshed into a form of mourning. The multiple shootings and stabbings in “The Irishman” are subtly shot by Prieto in grainy, unshowy lenses reminiscent of Tom Stern’s photography in Clint Eastwood’s own mournful adieu "Gran Torino.”

As for Scorsese’s controversial usage of de-aging his three lead actors, which already has its fair share of detractors, well, it initially feels distancing, but as the movie goes along so does your acceptance of it. The word groundbreaking can be used to describe the technology utilized in "The Irishman.”

The flow and momentum of “The Irishman” can be somewhat chaotic – it’s all over the place, using flashbacks to somehow edit together four different timelines into a, for the most part, coherent whole. However, the acting, courtesy of De Niro, Pesci and, even, Harvey Keitel (In a crucial, but important role as mob boss Angelo Bruno) sneaks up on you. Pacino as Hoffa triumphs with his own unique over-the-top bravado. Not only is the 79-year-old actor immaculately convincing and moving as the larger-than-life figure, but he’s also incredibly funny. Despite the dead-serious nature of the film, a ruminating almost elegiac adieu to the cinematic gangsters of yore, Pacino carries the movie in unexpected ways. There are the usual anger-filled shouting matches that only he can so thoroughly deliver, but there’s also the incredible humanity and richness to his characterization of Hoffa.

Zaillian’s messy script, an ambitious assemblage of timelines, takes its time to fully immerse the viewer into its world. “The Irishman” feels deliberately slow at initial glance, building up a world of code and honor that its characters abide by. The second half is more lively, sucking the viewer into the friendship between Sheeran and Hoffa, which rests at the very core of the film’s thematic and emotional resonance. It eventually leads to a tense final decision by Sheeran which compromises whatever we thought we knew about him and begs us to ask difficult questions.

It all ends with a stunning final shot, as Scorsese brings it all full circle, with Sheeran as lonely as ever, nearing death and filled with regret for the decisions he’s made in life. It feels like some kind of final hurrah for the 76-year-old director and his star actor, an adieu to the passage of time that feels like the finiteness of something major. It’s no coincidence then that Scorsese decided to include in the film a brief shot with the background of a cinema playing John Wayne’s own final hurrah, “The Shootist” — a film in which Wayne portrayed a dying and disabled cowboy nearing the end of his life and haunted by the violence he committed on people. Sheerhan would surely relate. [A-]