The Irishman: The Longest Three and a Half Hours of Your Life

Netflix's The Irishman is too long and extremely Scorsese. It is the director's most expensive and longest film to date. The film has been in development, faced multiple rewrites and even pushed back its release dates. This film is geared toward Scorsese's core audience of devoted fans; to understand or appreciate it audiences need to be extremely familiar with the techniques and themes of his past work. It is told in a flashback in voice-over or to the camera by Robert DeNiro.
Audiences travel through decades through the life of Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran.

The film plays on nostalgia of his works before almost like how The Force Awakens was to Star Wars fans. Scorsese's usual actors are in the lineup of the film including Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci while introducing other Italian actors to the mix.

The Irishman is based on the nonfiction novel of "I Heard You Paint Houses" and narrated by Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran played by Robert De Niro. He is a war veteran turned hit man for the Italian mob. The film starts off with him in a wheelchair in an old age home detailing the accounts of his younger life and interactions with Russell Buffalino (Joe Pesci). He started out his career as a meat deliveryman accused of theft where he meets lawyer Bill Buffalino cousin to Russell.

CGI was heavily used throughout the film to de-age each actor and move through a span of 60 years. This allowed them to portray their younger selves with smooth skin but it is hard for audiences to believe these three actors are passable to be young in the film. They still look over 40 with the technology. Audiences are familiar with these three in their younger ages and their appearances so the technology doesn't fool anyone.

Sheeran starts to work for the mob and do jobs for them. Overtime he grows closer to Russel and they develop a friendship. He mostly kills people and acts as a body guard. He is then assigned to look over Jimmy Hoffa, a famous face and head of the International Brothers of Teamsters, who has many enemies. Sheeran and Hoffa also becomes friends and their lives start to become intertwined. The second half of the movie is over consumed with the Hoffa story line and makes audiences question the first part of the story.

Hoffa is quickly locked up and replaced when Kennedy takes over as POTUS. Hoffa is then released by Nixon and works to regain his position in Teamsters. Through this he makes even more enemies and begins to spiral out of control which eventually leads to his murder. Jimmy Hoffa is considered one of the most famous missing person cases in America and his death has still not officially been determined but Sheeran confessed to doing it.

The Irishman is similar to many of Scorsese's other movies especially the tone. The set-up is the same with the lead telling the story through his narrative and traveling back into time to see the origins of his involvement in organized crime. Then watching him become more and more apart of the crime and mob as the story progresses. The film is more somber than his others as the character reflects on his life when he is alone in the end. He feels pain.

Enjoyable aspects of the film was Pesci's performance as Russell. He posses a scary and mysterious energy throughout the film that makes the audiences intrigued. It is hard to read him and audiences are never sure what he is going to do. He is subtle yet powerful. His scenes are a highlight of the film and rightfully drive it.

The film is long and audiences feel like they age as the actors on screen age. Scorsese milks every minute of it as we have an additional thirty minutes of just watching De Niro navigate through his old age alone and slowly losing his mobility. It feels like a Scorsese movie but brings up the question if it was even a necessary movie to make and who is it specifically made for. Do audiences need to know the story of Jimmy Hoffa? What was Scorsese trying to communicate to younger generations who only know him as the guy who make gangster movies? The Irishman comes off as a passion project for the director rather than a necessity to cinematic history.