So many movies, so little time! What with the holidays and the plethora of new films coming out over the last couple weeks, I feel a bit remiss in not publishing any reviews for a while. Sorry, but I’ve been busy enjoying myself, seeing some of these new movies, and just being seasonally slothful. People have been asking me about my take on a number of these new pictures, especially Little Women (excellent), Queen and Slim (very good), 1917 (terrific), Star Wars IX (not seen yet) and Bombshell (not seen yet). Mostly, though, I’ve been asked about my views on Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman. So here goes on that one.
The Irishman is an interesting and (eventually) involving picture about the life of a mafioso from the mid-1950s through the 1970s, recalled from the vantage point of the late 1990s. The protagonist is a real-life mafia “soldier”named Frank Sheeran; and the movie is based on a book called I Hear you Paint Houses by Charles Brandt, based in turn on the author’s nearly five years of interviews with Sheeran just before his death in 2003. Sheeran’s claim to fame is that he professes to be the guy who offed teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa in 1975.
At nearly three-and-a-half hours, the movie gives us a lot of time to get to know Frank Sheeran, as portrayed by Robert DeNiro, and that is both a weakness and a strength. On the one hand, it ends up that despite all that time with him, we never really get inside his character. We learn that he loves his family, as all mob guys claim to do, but that his loyalty to his crime family mentor and boss, Russell Bufalino (a nice comeback role for Joe Pesci), is even stronger. In fact, loyalty to Bufalino is pretty much his most important moral value. Stronger than his professed Catholic faith (with its inconvenient commandment that one shalt not kill); stronger than his loyalty to his other boss, Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), who comes to treat Frank like a member of his family, like a son even; and certainly more powerful than his relationship with his own daughters.
On the other hand, we never really learn why this so. We foster an interest in Frank over those three-and-a-half hours, only because he is our protagonist, not for any charm or likeability or even charisma about him or of feelings of sympathy for him. He is not particularly charismatic, likeable or charming. If anything, he’s the opposite. So he’s not a sympathetic character – more of an extraordinarily loyal, amoral schlub – who unquestionably (and fairly competently) does what his bosses require of him.
As mafia films go, The Irishman is okay but not great, despite its fine cast, a usually fine writer in Steven Zaillian [Awakenings (1990), Schindler’s List (1993), Moneyball (2011)] and a smart, often great director in Scorsese. Although Scorsese clearly was aiming for something big, meaningful, and epic in this one - something on the order of Francis Coppola's The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather II (1974) perhaps. Yet his previous mob-oriented pictures Mean Streets (1973), Goodfellas (1990) and Casino (1995) all are better than The Irishman. Sorry, Marty, this film will not be remembered as your magnum opus. Those other films moved along more briskly, had more involving, more interestingly portrayed characters - and in the case of the Godfather series, more character development in the protagonist Michael Corleone (Pacino). They were also far more original in their time than The Irishman, which looks and feels like a mountain of tropes. The main thing The Irishman has going for it in comparison is that it is based on and portrays actual, real life characters and that the death of one of them, Hoffa, has been a mystery for decades. The third act of the picture, which deals with this, has a higher level of interest and immediacy as a result.
Actually, even the upcoming Italian film The Traitor [Il Traditore] - about a real life Sicilian Cosa Nostra boss, Tommaso Buscetta, who turned informant in the 1980s, bringing down scores of Italian mafia bigwigs – is more epic and refreshing than The Irishman. While a bit overlong, it is fascinating and beautiful in ways that Scorsese’s movie is not. (The Traitor arrives in US theaters beginning January 30th, by the way.)
One of the issues I and others have with The Irishman is the casting. DeNiro is an undeniably great actor – one of the very best of his generation. Always a favorite of mine, he has long been a favorite of Scorsese too, having appeared now in nine of the director’s movies, including Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1982), as well as the three mentioned above. But, for several reasons, he was probably not the best choice here.
Frank Sheeran, born in Pennsylvania, got his nickname “The Irishman” (inspiring the title of this film) not just because of his ancestry but because - unusual in mafia circles - he looked Irish. DeNiro does not. At all. Even with the blue contact lenses he wears throughout the film, which just look weird! And since little to nothing is made of Frank’s Irish-American background in the movie, the whole project winds up seeming a bit off-kilter. Hiring an actor who looked more plausibly Irish or at least a little like the real Sheeran might have made the tale more convincing.
The bigger controversy, however, has to do with how Scorsese dealt with the scope of the story, which follows Frank’s life and career from his mid-thirties when he first meets Bufalino, through his early eighties, i.e. a span of nearly fifty years. Rather than use a couple of actors, one to play the younger Frank and one the elder version (as Coppola did in the Godfather series, with DeNiro as the young Vito Corleone and Brando as the older version), Scorsese opted to use DeNiro throughout. DeNiro is 76 and looks his age. He could pass for 65 or even 60 maybe, with good movie makeup. But as great an actor as he is, even DeNiro can’t pass for 35 or 45; even 50 would be a stretch. So, Scorsese incorporated a digital de-aging technique to make his star’s face look more like a middle-aged guy. It doesn’t work, and in fact, works against DeNiro and the movie, as I explain below. The technique was also used on co-stars Joe Pesci, who at 76 plays mob boss Bufalino from roughly age 50 through age 70, and Al Pacino, who at 79 portrays teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa between approximately 52 to 62. While not as severely or crucially bad as with DeNiro, the effect looks bad on these two as well. It is especially weird to watch, because we've actually SEEN DeNiro, Pesci and Pacino as younger men, and these de-aged versions do not look much like them at all.
Nevertheless, many critics have praised the movie. Nitsuh Abebe, in his NY Times Magazine article Why the Most Ridiculous Part of ‘The Irishman’ Actually Works, suggests that The Irishman should be seen primarily as a contemplation of aging; and on this basis, he provocatively defends the awkwardness of DeNiro, Pesci and Pacino impersonating characters so substantially younger than themselves. He claims the digital de-aging technique used by Scorsese actually underscores the primary theme concerning the regrets of old age.
But here’s the thing: while the film IS certainly about an elder Sheeran recollecting his life, the memories are about himself and the others when they were not only chronologically (thus facially) younger but physically much more vital as well. Yet the digital techniques at hand do nothing to modify the bodily movements of the actors, which plainly remain the movements of old guys. And particularly with DeNiro, there are multiple instances where we are painfully aware of this. For example, in a scene where the 40-something Frank goes to throw away a murder weapon, we see this guy with a youthified DeNiro-ish face, carefully “scramble” over some lakeside rocks with the creaky, I-don’t-want-to-fall physical attitude of an old man, before weakly tossing the gun into the water. Adding insult to injury, that unconvincing, computer engineered, de-aged face actually strips DeNiro of much of his expression, effectively depreciating his skill as an actor and making it that much harder for us to relate to his character.
As I’ve said, the CGI approach was a failed experiment. The initial footage should have told Scorsese to scrap what I'm sure he thought might be an interesting technique; because it was not working. At that point, he might also have taken a moment to reconsider the cumbersome length of the film.
As to why so many critics are hailing The Irishman as a great picture, it beats me. Nostalgia? Wishful thinking? Respect for the old guys? Alcohol? Don't get me wrong, I think it is worth seeing, just not a great or essential film.
3 Hours 29 minutes Rated: R
Grade: B
Still in select theaters if you want that big screen experience; and streaming exclusively on Netflix, particularly good if you’d like an intermission after a couple hours.
So many movies, so little time! What with the holidays and the plethora of new films coming out over the last couple weeks, I feel a bit remiss in not publishing any reviews for a while. Sorry, but I’ve been busy enjoying myself, seeing some of these new movies, and just being seasonally slothful. People have been asking me about my take on a number of these new pictures, especially Little Women (excellent), Queen and Slim (very good), 1917 (terrific), Star Wars IX (not seen yet) and Bombshell (not seen yet). Mostly, though, I’ve been asked about my views on Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman. So here goes on that one.
The Irishman is an interesting and (eventually) involving picture about the life of a mafioso from the mid-1950s through the 1970s, recalled from the vantage point of the late 1990s. The protagonist is a real-life mafia “soldier”named Frank Sheeran; and the movie is based on a book called I Hear you Paint Houses by Charles Brandt, based in turn on the author’s nearly five years of interviews with Sheeran just before his death in 2003. Sheeran’s claim to fame is that he professes to be the guy who offed teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa in 1975.
At nearly three-and-a-half hours, the movie gives us a lot of time to get to know Frank Sheeran, as portrayed by Robert DeNiro, and that is both a weakness and a strength. On the one hand, it ends up that despite all that time with him, we never really get inside his character. We learn that he loves his family, as all mob guys claim to do, but that his loyalty to his crime family mentor and boss, Russell Bufalino (a nice comeback role for Joe Pesci), is even stronger. In fact, loyalty to Bufalino is pretty much his most important moral value. Stronger than his professed Catholic faith (with its inconvenient commandment that one shalt not kill); stronger than his loyalty to his other boss, Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), who comes to treat Frank like a member of his family, like a son even; and certainly more powerful than his relationship with his own daughters.
On the other hand, we never really learn why this so. We foster an interest in Frank over those three-and-a-half hours, only because he is our protagonist, not for any charm or likeability or even charisma about him or of feelings of sympathy for him. He is not particularly charismatic, likeable or charming. If anything, he’s the opposite. So he’s not a sympathetic character – more of an extraordinarily loyal, amoral schlub – who unquestionably (and fairly competently) does what his bosses require of him.
As mafia films go, The Irishman is okay but not great, despite its fine cast, a usually fine writer in Steven Zaillian [Awakenings (1990), Schindler’s List (1993), Moneyball (2011)] and a smart, often great director in Scorsese. Although Scorsese clearly was aiming for something big, meaningful, and epic in this one - something on the order of Francis Coppola's The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather II (1974) perhaps. Yet his previous mob-oriented pictures Mean Streets (1973), Goodfellas (1990) and Casino (1995) all are better than The Irishman. Sorry, Marty, this film will not be remembered as your magnum opus. Those other films moved along more briskly, had more involving, more interestingly portrayed characters - and in the case of the Godfather series, more character development in the protagonist Michael Corleone (Pacino). They were also far more original in their time than The Irishman, which looks and feels like a mountain of tropes. The main thing The Irishman has going for it in comparison is that it is based on and portrays actual, real life characters and that the death of one of them, Hoffa, has been a mystery for decades. The third act of the picture, which deals with this, has a higher level of interest and immediacy as a result.
Actually, even the upcoming Italian film The Traitor [Il Traditore] - about a real life Sicilian Cosa Nostra boss, Tommaso Buscetta, who turned informant in the 1980s, bringing down scores of Italian mafia bigwigs – is more epic and refreshing than The Irishman. While a bit overlong, it is fascinating and beautiful in ways that Scorsese’s movie is not. (The Traitor arrives in US theaters beginning January 30th, by the way.)
One of the issues I and others have with The Irishman is the casting. DeNiro is an undeniably great actor – one of the very best of his generation. Always a favorite of mine, he has long been a favorite of Scorsese too, having appeared now in nine of the director’s movies, including Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1982), as well as the three mentioned above. But, for several reasons, he was probably not the best choice here.
Frank Sheeran, born in Pennsylvania, got his nickname “The Irishman” (inspiring the title of this film) not just because of his ancestry but because - unusual in mafia circles - he looked Irish. DeNiro does not. At all. Even with the blue contact lenses he wears throughout the film, which just look weird! And since little to nothing is made of Frank’s Irish-American background in the movie, the whole project winds up seeming a bit off-kilter. Hiring an actor who looked more plausibly Irish or at least a little like the real Sheeran might have made the tale more convincing.
The bigger controversy, however, has to do with how Scorsese dealt with the scope of the story, which follows Frank’s life and career from his mid-thirties when he first meets Bufalino, through his early eighties, i.e. a span of nearly fifty years. Rather than use a couple of actors, one to play the younger Frank and one the elder version (as Coppola did in the Godfather series, with DeNiro as the young Vito Corleone and Brando as the older version), Scorsese opted to use DeNiro throughout. DeNiro is 76 and looks his age. He could pass for 65 or even 60 maybe, with good movie makeup. But as great an actor as he is, even DeNiro can’t pass for 35 or 45; even 50 would be a stretch. So, Scorsese incorporated a digital de-aging technique to make his star’s face look more like a middle-aged guy. It doesn’t work, and in fact, works against DeNiro and the movie, as I explain below. The technique was also used on co-stars Joe Pesci, who at 76 plays mob boss Bufalino from roughly age 50 through age 70, and Al Pacino, who at 79 portrays teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa between approximately 52 to 62. While not as severely or crucially bad as with DeNiro, the effect looks bad on these two as well. It is especially weird to watch, because we've actually SEEN DeNiro, Pesci and Pacino as younger men, and these de-aged versions do not look much like them at all.
Nevertheless, many critics have praised the movie. Nitsuh Abebe, in his NY Times Magazine article Why the Most Ridiculous Part of ‘The Irishman’ Actually Works, suggests that The Irishman should be seen primarily as a contemplation of aging; and on this basis, he provocatively defends the awkwardness of DeNiro, Pesci and Pacino impersonating characters so substantially younger than themselves. He claims the digital de-aging technique used by Scorsese actually underscores the primary theme concerning the regrets of old age.
But here’s the thing: while the film IS certainly about an elder Sheeran recollecting his life, the memories are about himself and the others when they were not only chronologically (thus facially) younger but physically much more vital as well. Yet the digital techniques at hand do nothing to modify the bodily movements of the actors, which plainly remain the movements of old guys. And particularly with DeNiro, there are multiple instances where we are painfully aware of this. For example, in a scene where the 40-something Frank goes to throw away a murder weapon, we see this guy with a youthified DeNiro-ish face, carefully “scramble” over some lakeside rocks with the creaky, I-don’t-want-to-fall physical attitude of an old man, before weakly tossing the gun into the water. Adding insult to injury, that unconvincing, computer engineered, de-aged face actually strips DeNiro of much of his expression, effectively depreciating his skill as an actor and making it that much harder for us to relate to his character.
As I’ve said, the CGI approach was a failed experiment. The initial footage should have told Scorsese to scrap what I'm sure he thought might be an interesting technique; because it was not working. At that point, he might also have taken a moment to reconsider the cumbersome length of the film.
As to why so many critics are hailing The Irishman as a great picture, it beats me. Nostalgia? Wishful thinking? Respect for the old guys? Alcohol? Don't get me wrong, I think it is worth seeing, just not a great or essential film.
3 Hours 29 minutes Rated: R
Grade: B
Still in select theaters if you want that big screen experience; and streaming exclusively on Netflix, particularly good if you’d like an intermission after a couple hours.
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