IRISHMAN, THE

(director/writer: Martin Scorsese; screenwriters: Steve Zaillian/from the book by Charles Brandt; cinematographer: Rodrigo Prieto; editor: Thelma Schoonmaker; music: Robbie Robertson; cast: Robert De Niro (Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran), Al Pacino (Jimmy Hoffa), Joe Pesci (Russell Bufalino), Harvey Keitel (Angelo Bruno), Anna Paquin (adult Peggy Sheeran), Jesse Plemons (Chuckie O’Brien), Ray Romano (Bill Bufalino), (Skinny Razor), Louis Cancelmi (Salvatore “Sally Bugs” Briguglio), Stephen Graham (Tony Pro), Jack Huston (Robert Kennedy / RFK), Stephanie Kurtzuba (Irene Sheeran), Kathrine Narducci (Carrie Bufalino), Domenick Lombardozzi (Fat Tony Salerno), Paul Herman (Whispers DiTullio), Gary Basaraba (Frank ‘Fitz’ Fitzsimmons), Marin Ireland (Dolores Sheeran), Lucy Gallina (young Peggy Sheeran), Aleksa Palladino (Mary Sheeran), Welker White (Josephine “Jo” Hoffa), Steven Van Zandt (Jerry Vale); Runtime: 209; MPAA Rating: R; producers: Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, Emma Tillinger Koskoff, Irwin Winkler, Gerald Chamales, Gaston Pavlovich, Randall Emmett, Gabriele Israilovici; Netflix; 2019)

“All’s well in The Irishman.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz 

The melancholy but passionate biopic crime drama is based on the 2004 book by Charles Brandt: “Sheeran, I Heard You Paint Houses.” America’s top living filmmaker, writer-director Martin Scorsese (“Raging Bull”/”Goodfellas”), comes up with another classic signature mob film. It’s his most mature gangster movie, one not to be missed. He reunites for the first-time since his 1995 Casino with Robert De Niro. It’s also the first-time Al Pacino and the great director hook-up. Scorsese works efficiently from the probing script by co-writer Steve Zaillian. The crime drama is solid on all levels, as Scorsese’s usually gifted editor Thelma Schoonmaker and the great cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto make sure all’s well in The Irishman. The masterful three-and-a-half-hour movie is so well-paced it just flies by and is surprisingly filled with a droll humor, some warm touches and a sardonic way of looking at these gangsters in a not glorified way but as flawed people much like most of us even if their excessive violent actions and anti-social behavior make them monsters.

Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) is a real-life Mob soldier we encounter in a wheelchair at a Philadelphia-area Catholic nursing home who is the film’s unreliable narrator. He tells all before cancer put him out of his misery in 2003 at 83. The feeble Sheeran is ready to keel over after he fills us in on his ugly gangster career as the “Irishman” in the last half of the 20th century. It’s a time the film firmly believes when history-making hits on the Kennedys and the Cuban invasion and the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa may be connected to the Mafia and in particular to this Philly group.

The film moves on via flashbacks to the De Niro character in his 30s, who looks young again thanks to the digital de-aging process. Frank is a WW II combat veteran, who on his return home becomes a crooked meat-delivery truck driver. He finds his killer soldier skills give him a good resume for the local mob. When “the house painter” (mob slang for “painting the walls red” with blood) meets the ruthless Philly crime boss Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci), he finds a home with him as a hit man. Through him Frank connects with mob boss Angelo Bruno (Harvey Keitel) and the gangster “Skinny Razor” (Bobby Cannavale). Eventually Bufalino introduces him to the controversial Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), the celebrated president of the Teamsters Union, and Frank starts out as Hoffa’s bodyguard and later takes a key position as union president in Hoffa’s gangster-run union.

We are asked to consider whether Frank Sheeran killed the pugnacious Hoffa in 1975 on orders from Bufalino? The film, like Charles Brandt’s biography of Sheeran, offers a resounding yes, calling out Frank as “the good soldier,” willing to serve the mob anyway he can. Yet some of the incidents covered in the book have been discredited by Mafia experts. But no matter, Scorsese is more concerned with reflecting on the mobsters’ lost tawdry lives and how they age rather than proving if they were involved in the historical hits of the last century.

It’s the brilliantly detailed work of a top director at the top of his game, returning to make a crime film in a genre that he made his reputation on and is uniquely gifted in. Also, there’s the superbly energetic performances by the popular and talented ensemble cast and the always refreshing well-chosen period pop sounds on the background soundtrack that make this a cherished film, one I immensely admired and enjoyed and hope this is not the director’s last film as he hinted at.

REVIEWED ON 12/24/2019  GRADE: A  https://dennisschwartzreviews.com/  

REVIEWED ON 12/24/2019  GRADE: A  https://dennisschwartzreviews.com/