Review of The Irishman (2019) by Cmc — 10 Nov 2019

Very entertaining, unnecessarily too long without quite becoming epic, and a somewhat predictable replay of the boys doing their mafia thing. Great acting, but De Niro is just his usual De Niro. Al Pacino does a great job of acting but the film suffers because I think he was mis-cast; a more bland meathead tough-guy type was needed for that role.

Joe Pesci was the surprise. He was allowed to play a more restrained, non-whiny role and he was excellent. For all of the concentration on the Teamsters stuff, I still did not feel like I learned that much new about that world.

De Niro has two wives and there is no development of his relationship with either of them. There is also a lot of footage about his daughter rejecting him, but this also seems underdeveloped, forced and not convincing.

There are a few cinemagraphic Scorsese "effects" moments like slow-motion crowd shots, but none of these are original in 2019, and none are gripping like some scenes from Goodfellas. While I completely agree with Scorsese's critique of the Marvel Action movies, and this is most definitely a film and not a movie, his extended critique of predictable franchises with safe money actors hits a little too close here as well.