Year: 2019
Director: Martin Scorsese
Am I the first to have found the necessary 3 plus hours to devour this prime piece of gorgonzola? Scorsese rounding up his dream team of de Niro, Pacino and Pesci, along with Harvey Keitel and numerous other ‘was that so and so’ cameos. Of course, as much the hype has been the cost of the computer electrickery to de-age the cast into an approximation of how they may have looked in their prime, which requires remembering the prime of mobsters tends to be a burly high waisted trouser middle age. Tackling that first, I thought it OK, the images sometimes akin to the fake colouring of a B&W film. It didn’t bother me but Mrs Path found their eyebrows annoying. In truth, and it is no dealbreaker to say the film follows de Niro, ‘the’ Irishman, from these high waists to bathchair aged reflection, the make-up to age him was less successful.
The clamour and clatter of the press suggests this is a work of genius. Well, that depends. If you like this sort of thing, sure, it is a fabulous ride and seldom falters. If these guys and gangsters are your bag, you’ll love it. I do and I did. The tone of the period, 1950s into 1970s is well gauged, the unobtrusive soundtrack redolent of sleazy supper clubs and crinoline cabarets. And the story, yes, the story is much as you expect, whether you know the background or not, the nature of the mob is predictable and formulaic, that being half the joy. Of course you know what’s coming next, it is working out when it’s coming that is the pleasure. If nothing else, it has made me want to seek out the real backstory, maybe by catching the Jack Nicholson Hoffa film. (I am sure there are proper documentaries too, but I can’t help but feel they would be less fun, if, no doubt, rightly galling in their portrayal of not very nice men doing not very nice things….)
It’s the acting triad that has garnered most attention, and it is astonishing that Pacino and de Niro have only appeared together the once, in the estimable ‘Heat’, as they seem eternally associated in the filing cabinet of my mind. De Niro is de facto the main character and he is on top form, all his old mannerisms back after years on autopilot, downturned mouth grimaces and bare flickers of an eye to demonstrate every millisecond switch of emotion, from pathos to pathology. Pacino is, well, Pacino is just his usual Al, perhaps turned up to 12 rather than his usual 11, maybe still more as his character becomes increasingly manic. Pesci is the delight, dragged out of retirement after years of cajoling from old buddy Bob. This is no reprise of his Goodfella’s persona, a shame you might say, but this is way more nuanced a role, the calculating fixer who seems to be moving all the parts, whether they know it or not. But, even with the de-aging, heck, how old he has got, certainly compared to the rest of the gang, this adding to the gravitas. His absence from the screen over the last couple of decades strangely adds to the depth and delight of his character, his co-stars never off a screen somewhere in the intervening. Which, in a way, is the rub, as, however good this film is, however the plaudits pile, it is really just more of the same, if writ large. Large and long, possibly a swansong for this era of Hollywood. Sure, Scorsese will make more films, hopefully, and the actors, maybe not Pesci, will probably be in more films, but this feels a last hurrah for this team in this timbre. Maybe it is fitting that it is on telly, on Netflix, a reminder of how big movies used to be made when we went to the cinema, as we realise we never need to again.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
Anything by Scorsese, de Niro when he was good and Pacino when he is crazy, Heat, Goodfellas, My Cousin Vinnie. I suspect having a penis helps: eyebrows apart, Mrs Path found it annoying boysie nonsense, chock full of cliches, missing the point that that is the point.
I’m trying to persuade Lady W that if we watch it split over two nights all will be well. You know that look, don’t you?
“Mrs Path found their eyebrows annoying” – that’s me decided against this then. Eyebrows have become my bete noir (extremely bloody noir) recently. What the fuck is going on with these things? I saw a bit of the Apprentice the other night and there were three young women sitting together looking like the Groucho Marx Impersonation Society.
You and me both Moose. Women’s eyebrows these days are bloody hideous. Drawn on thin lines replacing any actual hair. Seriously wtf.
And don’t get me started on the woman on QVC who has blonde hair and black eyebrows. Dye the fuckers!!
Perchance, the lady on QVC is an “airplane blonde” ?
Anybody else imagining a Boeing with a big toupee on?
I’ve been discussing this on Twitter with Archie V, late of this parish, well ‘discussing’ might be putting it a bit high, and we agreed it was a stone-cold masterpiece, right from the first long tracking shot through the old folks’ home. I was expecting to flag, but I lasted the whole 3+ hours and was hooked throughout. Sure, some of the ageing/youthing is a little strange, but I soon forgot that.
The most efficient way to kill someone is to walk up behind them and shoot them in the head several times, it seems…but I guess we already knew that.
When I was growing up in London my father was known by all his friends as The Irishman, on account of his nationality. Which was Irish. I doubt very much the film is about him though. He was a painter and decorator.
When I saw the OP I thought someone was reporting back after a spot of the other with Aiden Gillen or, I dunno, Christy Moore.*
(*I’m pretty sure that in his passport CM identifies himself as The Irishman)
Ah, but did he paint houses?
š
Lissen.
Whadiwannaknow is dis.
Does Harvey get to sell them “insurance”?
Do the mugs buy it?
Just finished watching it myself. The missus was out, so I texted to see if she fancies it…before starting it two minutes later as she hadnāt answered. Seriously, if I started watching it with her it would take us a week to finish it.
SPOILERS I guess, but not really…
I really enjoyed it. I think it pips The Joker as my film of the year. Yes, the CGI ageing thing was all a bit odd at times, but itās the only way to get this cast together and have them cover the time period they do, so we can overlook that. Itās almost definitely the first and last time weāll see De Niro, Pacino, Pesci and Keitel together, albeit Keitel was underused. It was a shame that Bobby Cannavale wasnāt used more too, as he always seems to me to be the heir apparent to the aforementioned four for this kind of film. He was excellent in Boardwalk Empire. And it was great to see Stephen Graham in the mix. If Scorsese was 20 years younger he could be his new Joe Pesci. Do we think Scorsese will make any more gangster films? Probably not, and if not this would be a fitting epitaph.
Yes: Graham is outstanding. A lovely surprise seeing him in the meeting scene with Pacino, a real WTF as you suddenly realise itās him out of Made in England and The Virtues, up there with only bloody AL Pacino. I wonder whether thatās what he thought too. I know Brit actors are 3 a penny in America these days but he wasnāt the first face i was expecting. His accent was pretty good too with only a smidgeon of scouse slipping thru. (My step dter points out he isnāt actually from Liverpool)
Iād consider Kirkby as part of Liverpool.
Oho, thanks for that. She had us thinking it was Kirkby Lonsdale!!
If he wasnāt from Liverpool heās picked the accent up even better than Jan Molby did!
That’s not difficult to be fair.
We are two hours into it and taking a break there for the night.
It’s hard going. Goodfellas, The Departed, Wolf of Wall Street…. All seemed to have a drive that this lacks. I’m all for complex plots but this is dense, dense stuff. If you don’t really know much about Jimmy Hoffa or his union or mobsters or whatever, then this does nothing to hold your hand and walk you through it. I’m totally lost in a sea of Big Tony, Little Tony, Joe this, Joe that… I find it hard to care for any of it.
Plus the cast are all too old. It’s a novelty and a brief thrill to see DeNiro, Pacing, Pesci , Keitel…. er, Ray Romano all share a screen together but you wish they had done it years ago when they were all a bit more vibrant and energetic. No amount of wigs, make-up and hokey CGI can disguise the saggy slump of a septuagenarian actor. It’s all so undignified when they are all trying to play tough guys in their thirties and forties.
But I’ll pick it up and push through to the end. I’ve heard the last half hour is where it all comes together and takes a poignant turn. I sincerely hope that’s true.
Oh, by the way the music is outstanding. Scorcese’s usual keen ear for sublime doo-wop and blistering r ‘n’b.
FWIIW, I started watching it last night & will hopefully finish it tonight.
From what I have seen so far I think it is a wonderful, epic film & I think it will be a major Oscar contender (assuming that it qualifies due to the Netflix thing)
I think Joe Pesci steals every scene he is in, but truth be told I think the entire cast are on top form.
With the flashing backwards & forwards in time & Castro/Cuba featuring, it is much like a melding of Godfather part 2 & Goodfellas.
Great film so far & very much looking forward to seeing the second half tonight.
It qualifies for Oscars because it was released in cinemas before it appeared.kn Netflix 2 weeks later.
We watched it last night. I need to watch it again, but I loved Pesci, liked the CGI thingy and the music was as good as you might expect. (Robbie Roberston of course).
I hated it! Far too long, far too slight in terms of characterisation across the board and I really don’t and didn’t care who did what to Jimmy Hoffa and why. I watched it because the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive and friends whose opinions I respect and usually share raved about it.
But De Niro’s character lacks real motivation and depth. He relies on his overused downturned mouth expression far too much and the other principals – Pesci and even Pacino – underplay their parts so much that I was dying for them to do their signature things.
Scorsese has always been good on violence – indicating how horrific and messy it must be. Here it is matter-of-fact and uncomplicated. At first I thought this was done as an ironic reference to some of the key killings of his other films. Eventually it just seemed lazy – a way to move the plot along without adding to the overall length.
Crucially, I felt little empathy/sympathy for any of them, which is odd, because empathising with the key characters in Goodfellas, Casino – even The Wolf of Wall Street and Raging Bull – was something that stood out in other Scorsese films.
As for the female characters, they were woefully under-represented and served. I think Anna Paquin’s character had just one line.
By far the biggest movie disappointment of the year.
De Niro’s downturned mouth …. remember what yer mam used to tell you about if the wind changes direction….?
I thought it was a major disappointment. What happened to the dynamic camerawork, eclectic soundtrack and sheer pace I would normally associate with Scorcese’s filmmaking?
Sluggish in the extreme, and definitely over-long. One of the skills in putting together a good film is knowing what to leave out, not simply cramming everything in. Scorcese used to know this.
Yes, there were good performances, but I’m not sure if any of them were great performances, and their impact was diluted by the extended screen time most of the leads had.
I’d pretty much lost the will to live by the final hour.
Not sure if all the glowing reviews in the media aren’t a kind of wish-fulfilment, that at last Marty’s made another gangster pic, with all the old faces in it. I really don’t think it delivers on expectations.
I’m glad I’m not alone!
We could start a support group!
Watched it last night.
Expected to watch it over two sittings but the missus and I were both hooked from the start.
Pacino upstaged DeNiro for me and there were some rants that were hilarious.
Great film – one of my favourites this year. The CGI I thought was very good except for one brief moment when it looked like DeNiro had a plastic ear.
I’m in the ‘not too keen’ camp. I don’t think the de-aging technology worked all that well, and the characters weren’t particularly engaging. Over 3+ hours I felt it meandered a lot, and there was a much tighter story to be found somewhere in it.
Maybe it’ll work better over two or three separate viewings, as opposed to the one cinema sitting I experienced.
There is a thing going round with suggested breakpoints for watching it as a four part mini-series!
00 – 49mins – When Jimmy ends his phone call
49 – 1h40 – When Joey’s introduced
1h40 – 2h47:30 – When Frank exits the house
2h47:30 – end
I ended up watching it in one sitting on Friday night when Mrs D was out at her Xmas party, with a few breaks when the dog decided to interrupt to let me know she wanted a biscuit, needed to go out to look for Hedgehogs in the garden or make sure that I knew Mrs D wasn’t home and so that she was concerned that I might forget to feed/walk her.
Enjoyed it, but was a bit sluggish and definitely too long.
Ooh! Ta for that. I think for a film of this length, in the old days, there would be an intermission at the cinema screening and the director would decide what would be a suitable point to pause.
Iām not down with having to choose where to pause something Iāve never seen before, as it often messes with the flow or completely wrecks an important pop passage of the story..
Thought it was a good film – watched it in one sitting on Netflix yesterday afternoon
Watched it last night, I took a break after 1hr 40. and had a bath. Add me to the less impressed crowd. Great to see some of the old boys back together, particularly excited by Scorcese directing de Niro again after a long break. New boy Pacino gave the best performance of the leads though.
I think Goodfellas is one of the greatest movies ever made, the narration helped make it what it was. It was vivacious, stunning, groundbreaking filmmaking. He then basically repeated it in Casino (again with the voiceover), and The Wolf of Wall Street (even worse). If you are making a 3 and a half hour movie in which not a massive amount happens then to need a voiceover to explain things is somewhat lazy filmmaking.
I did enjoy the first 2 hrs or so and it’s not the worst thing I’ve seen this year. The last hour and a half was a bit of a struggle. De Niro’s shrugs and body reactions became annoying, one phone call scene aside, I wonder if he has anything left. This has been the case for at least 20 years too, and maybe he was always over reliant on the same box of tricks acting wise. Pesci was better, but naturally more subdued these days. Steven Graham was excellent. I saw Steve Van Zandt credited, must have dropped off in his scene.
I didn’t emphasise with anyone in the film, I suppose we are supposed to feel with the daughter, but very brief scenes over extremely long periods meant that it wasn’t as easy to do that as it should have been.
The “de-aging” stuff I found slightly offputting. The younger De Niro looked like he could be a younger version of the character he was playing, but we know what De Niro really looked like at that age and it wasn’t like that. And everyone just looked like old guys with younger faces.
Struck me as a Scorcese/De Niro vanity project in which one of the co-producers insists on playing the main lead even though he is 30 or 40 years to old to do it. The scene with the grocer looked like a nearly 80 yr old man causing violence, rather than a 40 yr old one that he would have been at that time.
Still glad I saw it, but I have seen many films this year and it probably languishes somewhere in the middle. Enjoyed another long movie (Ford v Ferrari or Le Mans ’66) much more a few days ago, so not even the best film I saw in the last week.
And I got sick of people getting shot in the head.
Spotted Van Zandt as the singer at Frank’s testimonial dinner
We sat down on Saturday evening determined to go the whole nine yards. I checked the time at the start, it was about eight oāclock. I had a conversation with myself. Is it too late to start? Will I make it to 11:30 or later allowing for wee breaks? Decided to go for it. Really enjoyed it for about two and a half hours, then I began to nod a little in a way that Iām sure many here will recognise. I must have missed a few scattered scenes as I wasnāt quite sure what was going on near the end. Clearly too ambitious and serves me right.
On the production side, what I saw was impressive although somewhat spoiled by one strange scene fairly near the start where āBobā is giving a grocer a bit of an hiding. Those punches and kicks really didnāt look to be connecting. Both of us noticed it and Iām surprised that āMartyā let it go in the final edit.
Ref the makeup and CGI de-aging, I felt that worked really well although I wasnāt sure if Joe Pesci was being aged or if thatās what he looks like these days.
Anyway DeNiro was great and Al Pacino (who has all the fun) will be up for a few awards for best supporting actor. Iāll need to watch the last hour again I suspect.
Ha ha re the grocer:?we shouted out āmissedā too!
Yeah I noticed that grocer scene too.
He stands on the grocers hand with his right foot and then stomps on the pavement with his left foot. I’ve never seen that move before – it seemed to work though, the guy screamed.
Also, I’m sure that Pacino forgot his line when he was ranting to his flunkies in the office. Like he can’t remember who he’s ranting about so he just pounds the table, spins around holds his head [puts his left arm in, his left arm out] and then finally remembers.
Anyone else think ‘Polar Express’ when they first saw the ‘de-aging’?
Apart from that, the film looks great, but dear me it’s just not very good really is it?
Struggling a bit. After the shooting of Hoffa I thought it was over, then paused it a second and saw there’s another half an hour to go. This was already my second sitting, having stopped the first time after 90 minutes. From De Niro handing over his sunglasses to Pesci to getting them back, how long was that? Seemed like an ice age. You could fit a whole other movie in there.
I love the cinematography, the period detail and the music, and the acting. So why do I keep drifting off on the sofa?
Spoiler alert!: Yes. Did we really need to see him walk to the plane, get off the plane etc. Probably there’s a spinoff movie about the fish on the back seat incident too.
First half was compelling. Second half meandered. The problem is I didn’t care about the characters. Overall: above average.