Martin Scorsese’s 2019 epic The Irishman is exactly as good as you’d imagine a Scorsese movie starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci would be.
Which is really very good.
Controversial for being a ‘more-or-less’ straight to Netflix release (it did have significantly truncated run in cinemas before landing on the streaming service), any fears that this would be anything other than brilliant were quickly put-to-bed.
If one wanted to be churlish, it might be fair to say The Irishman doesn’t really bring anything new to Scorsese’s oeuvre – epic gangster movies being fairly familiar ground for the acclaimed director – but The Irishman does feel like an evolution of sorts and manages to keep you interested in the characters without encouraging you to necessarily like any of them.
The technology used to de-age the cast might well have been revolutionary, but it’s hard to ever truly be convinced that either De-Niro or Pacino are ever in their thirties, whatever visual effects are in play. It doesn’t matter – the story-telling is so compelling that it’s easy enough to suspend your disbelief and if the 209 minute running time seems like a lot to commit to, by the end you almost find yourself wishing for more.
Score for Christmasishness
The Christmasishness is tenuous for this one but there is a Christmas scene about an hour in, which is fairly relevant to the narrative. It’s not on screen for very long but it is very Christmassy for the duration. It also helps to make the last scene of the movie even more poignant when the titular character finds himself spending his final days alone in a nursing home, forsaken by his family. It doesn’t look or seem very Christmassy, but, to the surprise of the protagonist, we discover that it is Christmas – not that that revelation makes the least bit of difference to him. Not a Christmas movie by any definition, but Christmas certainly plays a small part in the story.
James Proclaims! 