The Irishman: DeNiro, Pacino and Pesci's best work in years is best seen in the theatre
By Liam Lacey
Rating A
Martin Scorsese’s new feature, The Irishman, begins with a long, sinewy tracking shot through a building that we gradually realize is a Catholic retirement home.
We arrive at an old man with white hair and oversized glasses in a wheelchair, who, after a beat, we recognize as Robert De Niro, looking about ten or fifteen years older than real life.
He’s playing Frank Sheeran, a former union organizer and criminal with a confession to make. Most people aren’t that interested in it anymore, because it happened a long time ago. It’s about the disappearance of former Teamster boss, Jimmy Hoffa, who says Frank, was once as big as Elvis or The Beatles.
Lawyer Bill Bufalino (Ray Romano), Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) and Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) enter court
The Irishman is a movie rampant with memory, not only the stories in Sheehan’s head but, for moviegoers, a half-century of associations with its director, Scorsese, and stars De Niro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino.
It’s all here -- the elegant tracking shots and ballet camera pans, the explosive violence, the semi-comic criminal lingo, the mirror image of the Catholic church and Italian-American crime rituals. The post-War Italian-American gangster movie - both in Scorsese’s films such as Goodfellas and Casino, and in his friend Francis Coppola’s Godfather trilogy - have provided a dark mirror version of the American post-War success story. It’s a version where, long before the current mess, capitalism and corruption were inseparable.
At an estimated US$160 million,The Irishman is the most expensive Scorsese film to date. But, of course, it’s not an ordinary film. It’s a high-risk Netflix project with a hefty price-tag and a three-and-a-half hour running time, which makes it sit somewhere between a conventional movie and, for the home-movie audience, a choose-your-own-breaks mini-series.
But see it in the theatre if you can. Shot by Rodrigo Prieto (Brokeback Mountain, Wolf of Wall Street) and edited by Scorsese’s right-hand, Thelma Schoonmaker, it has the effect of an immersive cinematic dream. That intent is signaled by the movie’s theme, the velvety 1956 doowop classic, In The Still of the Night.
The Irishman is based on Charles Brandts 2004 book on Sheeran, I Heard You Paint Houses, the veracity of which has been disputed. But that doesn’t lessen the power of the story.
Screenwriter Steven Zaillian (Gangs of New York) frames the film around Frank telling his story in voice-over (as in Goodfellas). Within his memory is the account of one particular road trip in July, 1975, from Philadelphia to Detroit, in the company of Frank’s mob mentor, Russell Bufalino (Pesci) and their wives, Irene (Stephanie Kurtzuba) and Carrie (Kathrine Narducci), to attend a family wedding.
Because Russell won’t allow smoking in the car, there are lots of stops along the way, for the wives to take smoke breaks -- and also for Russell to pick up envelopes of money from his various “associates.”
Outside of Philly, Frank stops across the street from a Texaco station, which triggers his memory of his first meeting with Russell in the 1950s. As a driver for a meat packing company, he first met Russell at a gas station, where the latter helped fix his truck. He immediately pegged Russell as someone to be reckoned with.
De Niro’s most movingt work in years
Later, when Frank worked out a scam stealing meat and selling it to a local crime boss (Bobby Cannavale), he meets the city’s top crime boss, Angelo Bruno (Harvey Keitel) and then Russell. Frank, who spent the war fighting in Italy, and speaks enough Italian to be trusted. Soon, Frank is hired to do muscle work, collecting debts for Russell with the appropriate amount of threat (“Show him the gun. Don’t use it.”).
When he makes an error of judgement, by attempting a side job that infringes on Angelo’s territory, Russell covers for him, and from then on, Frank’s in debt, albeit lucratively. Neither his first wife, Mary (Aleksa Palladino) and his second wife, Irene, pay much attention to how Frank brings homes envelopes full of cash. But his daughter, Peggy (Lucy Gallina) is wary of his friends, especially “Uncle Russ”. When the girl becomes an adult (played by Anna Paquin), her estrangement becomes the spiritual cost of his choices.
In contrast, as the movie moves into it second act, Peggy is immediately drawn to Frank’s new “friend”, the Teamster union chief, Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino), for whom Frank is working as a bodyguard.
Hoffa is a charismatic hothead, who shares ice-cream sundaes with the kid, and has barely controlled contempt for the deadly serious tight-lipped wise-guys from the mob. Hoffa was not Italian, but of Irish-German background, and the movie suggests his disdain for the Italians was part of his undoing.
When he has an arranged lunch with a mob-connected New Jersey teamster gunning for the Teamster’s leadership, "Tony Pro" (Stephen Graham), the fastidious Hoffa can’t contain his contempt for a guy who shows up late – and wearing shorts!
All this makes for a remarkable triangle of performances at the center of the film, with Pesci, playing against type as the quietly ruthless mob manager, Pacino, as the blindly egocentric union boss, and De Niro as the anxious go-between, a more-or-less straight man. A good deal of commentary has been made about the “de-aging” special effects in the film, that allow these actors to look thirty or more years younger than their real ages. Yes, it’s initially distracting – De Niro’s eyes don’t seem to quite fit his face. But there’s something so inherently mythic about the telling of the story, that the artifice works and deepens the moral abyss at its core.
This is some of De Niro’s most moving work in years. His performance full of anxious misfit energy, where his often-parodied grimaces, tics and haunted gaze feel entirely correct. He’s a character who, in Catholic terms, recognizes the depths of his sin but is unable to see redemption.
While there’s a tragic inevitability in Frank’s arc, there’s black humour in the film especially in the euphemistic foreboding dialogue, taken to a Harold Pinter-esque extreme. The banal, “It is what it is,”, here means “Negotiations are over.” The title of Brandt’s book, repeated in the movie credits was “I hear you paint houses,” which does not refer to someone with an account at Sherwin-Williams. Taking it one step further, Frank promises that, not only does he paint houses, “I do my own carpentry as well.”
As wonderful as it is to watch these three actors do their best work in years, frankly, The Irishman does feel somewhat distended. The background historical material – tracing familiar claims that the Mob essentially got John Kennedy elected and then felt betrayed by him when his brother Robert prosecuted them – feel somewhat like a PowerPoint presentation.
There’s also a downside to having so many good actors wanting to be in a Scorsese film. Even more distracting than the “de-aging” effects, is a supporting cast full of “isn’t that?” moments, with actors that feel over-qualified for small roles: Keitel’s virtual cameo turn; Ray Romano as Russell’s cousin, a shady mob lawyer; Jesse Plemons (Fargo, Breaking Bad), who gets one macabre scene as Hoffa’s foster son. And there’s Orange Is The New Black’s gorgeous Dascha Polanco, still in an institutional uniform, as Frank’s retirement home nurse.
Women are distinctly in the background here. But, in fairness to Scorsese, “toxic masculinity” is his uncontested forte, including his most feminist film, 1974’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Watching The Irishman through to its haunted conclusion, you could not confuse his subject with an endorsement.
The Irishman. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Screenplay: Steven Zaillian. Starring: Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino. The Irishman opens for a theatrical run at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Nov. 8.