Scorsese Mob film more moody than bloody By: Alan Small Posted: 7:00 PM CST Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2019

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This article was published 25/11/2019 (1813 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What better way to usher in the holiday season than watching the Three Wise Guys of gangster cinema on your TV in a moody, yet gripping, new film directed by Martin Scorsese.

The Irishman, which stars Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci and begins streaming today on Netflix, follows the latter half of the 20th century via the words and deeds of Frank Sheeran, a truck driver who gets more and more involved in organized crime and eventually becomes a Teamsters executive. Based on the Charles Brandt book I Heard You Paint Houses, it is Sheeran who is the house painter — the Mob euphemism for a hitman.

The Irishman is Scorsese’s second foray with Netflix, following June’s Bob Dylan quasi-documentary Rolling Thunder Revue. The Irishman was also released earlier this month in select movie theatres in the United States, so it could qualify for Oscar consideration by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Scorsese, who earned an Oscar for directing The Departed in 2006 but is probably better known for movies such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas, was in hot demand by the streaming service, which signed on to The Irishman project despite its $US160-million budget, part of which included funds for new de-aging special effects that turn its septuagenarian stars into young men.

Watching a new Scorsese film in the convenience of a living room sounds like cinematic luxury. But there’s a catch. He makes long movies, many of which follow characters over several decades. Goodfellas, for instance, was 145 minutes and Casino came in at 178 minutes. The Irishman is 209 minutes long — that’s three hours and 29 minutes — without intermission.

Filmgoers knew what they were getting into when they bought a ticket for The Irishman. During a screening at a Los Angeles cinema earlier this month, no one in the audience had a giant soda or a big bag of popcorn prior to the movie. They were hunkered down for a cinematic marathon and didn’t want to break the Scorsese spell by making a bathroom run.

If anyone stepped out for relief, they were sitting in the back.

But when The Irishman begins on home TV screens starting today, the temptation to take a break will be too great for the majority of viewers. The phone will ring. The dog will whimper. The snacks and soda will run out.

Nature will call.

Setting those inconveniences aside, there are many reasons why viewers should plan ahead so they won’t have to press the pause button on their remotes when they watch The Irishman.

One is the performance of Robert De Niro.

He plays Frank Sheeran, the narrator, who tells his side of the story from a wheelchair in a nursing home, an old man whose actions have left him with no one left to visit him in his dying days except nurses and a priest. Like so many people, he has great tales to tell from his younger days, when he hobnobbed with powerful mobsters who were treated like celebrities in in the 1950s and ‘60s but have become long-forgotten footnotes in American history to younger generations.

Frank takes us back to postwar Philadelphia, where he is a veteran-turned-truck driver who helps pay for his growing family by aiding the Mob. Eventually he becomes someone who “paints houses,” and he does so with the drama of a house painter, too.

It’s one of the many divergences The Irishman takes when compared with Scorsese’s most famous Mob films. There are no bodies left freezing in meat trucks as in Goodfellas, nor does anyone get his head squeezed in a vice (see Casino). Instead, when Frank does a killing, he is frank — two or three shots fired and he’s gone, on to the next assignment. Just another transaction, completed with the emotion of paying an electric bill.

It’s Frank’s ability to follow orders without questioning them that connects him with higher-up mobster Russell Buffalino (Pesci), and later with Russell’s boss (Harvey Keitel), who commands with a menacing glare and one or two soft words.

Russell orders the transactions (arm-twistings, arsons, killings), says narrator Frank, who adds that nothing in Philly’s Mob scene happens without Russell’s say-so. This is Pesci playing against type — the soft-spoken mentor and friend to Frank, instead of the hair-trigger foil to criminal masterminds — and he makes it work.

The histrionics in The Irishman fall to Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino), whom Frank’s is assigned to guard. He later becomes a confidant to the notorious Teamsters union boss. Hoffa curses out rivals, subordinates and the Kennedys while scarfing down ice cream sundaes and preaching solidarity to fellow Teamsters with the vigour of a televangelist.

There are many reasons why viewers should plan ahead so they won’t have to press the pause button on their remotes when they watch The Irishman.

Hoffa didn’t get to be the boss without being charming, though, and the Hoffas quickly become close friends with Sheeran and his four daughters. While they fear their godfather Russell, they take to Hoffa like their favourite uncle.

If you know Hoffa’s story, you’ll know he won’t need to age, unlike the rest of the cast. Instead of using different actors to play the characters as younger men, the de-aging special effects show them growing older as the years pass.

Do De Niro and Pacino become Travis Bickle and Michael Corleone? Thankfully, no.

The effect isn’t perfect, but it works because it is done gradually throughout the film instead of showing abrupt changes. It’s far less obtrusive than when young actors have to put on layers of makeup to appear older. (Remember Leonardo DiCaprio and Armie Hammer in J. Edgar?)

Scorsese has said during interviews for The Irishman that we all face our reckonings. Here, the director proves stylized violence isn’t required to reveal the most cruel of reckonings.

alan.small@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter:@AlanDSmall

Alan Small
Reporter

Alan Small has been a journalist at the Free Press for more than 22 years in a variety of roles, the latest being a reporter in the Arts and Life section.

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