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Robert De Niro  excels at playing closed-off, unreachable characters—hard men who might seem a bit dull if you met them for the first time, but have inner lives that they rarely let anyone see, and are mysteries to themselves. De Niro was 75 when he played yet another of those characters in Martin Scorsese ’s " The Irishman,” which feels like a summation of a rich subset of De Niro's long career. 

Adapted by screenwriter Steve Zaillian (“Schindler’s List”) from Charles Brandt ’s book  I Heard You Paint Houses , and clocking in at three-and-a-half hours, the movie is an alternately sad, violent, and dryly funny biography of Frank Sheeran, a World War II combat veteran who became a Mafia hitman and then a union leader, and who had a long, at times politically fraught friendship with Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa ( Al Pacino ). You feel every one of De Niro’s years in his haunting performance, as well as those of Pacino, Joe Pesci , and Harvey Keitel , who are “de-aged” for flashbacks via computer-generated imagery as well as analog makeup and hairpieces. You also feel the years in the mostly younger supporting cast (including Bobby Cannavale , Kathrine Narducci , Stephanie Kurtzuba , Gary Basaraba and Stephen Graham as gang bosses, spouses, and union leaders), who age forward. 

And you feel them in Scorsese’s direction, which is more contemplative than his gangster movie norm (at times as meditative as his religious pictures), and which deftly shifts between eras, using dialogue and voice-over to make the time-jumps seamless. The frame-within-a-frame-within-a-frame structure is one of the most complex of Scorsese's career. But it's realized with such grace by Scorsese, Zaillian and longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker that it never feels fussy or overdetermined, gliding from one thought-path to another as a recollecting mind juxtaposes the distant past, the recent past, and the present. 

The opening shot glides through a retirement home, finding Frank sitting alone in a wheelchair. He’s such a rock-like presence that, seen from the back, he looks as if he could be dead. Then the camera circles around to reveal his lined face, cloudy eyes, and white hair. He starts to speak. His statements become the film’s narration. We don’t know who he’s telling this story to. Very late in the movie, we see him talking with a priest. But the audience is us, really. 

The concluding half-hour—an immersion into this now-old man’s life, fuller than we’re used to seeing in any American film not directed by Clint Eastwood —provides a clarifying framework. This is a film about the intersection of crime and politics, Mafia history and Washington history. It touches on Fidel Castro’s rise in Cuba and the CIA’s attempts to overthrow him, President John F. Kennedy ’s assassination, and the mob wars of the 1960s and ‘70s. But it’s mostly about age, loss, sin, regret, and how you can feel like a passive object swept along by history even if you played a role in shaping it. If Sheeran’s account of his life is to be trusted (and many crime historians warn that it isn't), he was intimately involved in a handful of pivotal moments in American history. And yet we might still come away from " The Irishman " seeing him as a passive figure: the Zelig or Forrest Gump of gangsters—because of how he tells the story, as if he's in denial about what it meant and what it says about him. 

Although he's capable of violence, and can mete it out on a moment's notice, Frank seems mostly content to hang in the backgrounds of Scorsese’s wiseguy murals, behind louder, more eccentric men (especially Jimmy Hoffa, played with wit and gusto by Pacino, in hoarse-voiced, shouting-and-strutting mode). Frank is muted and reactive for the most part, and great at talking his way out of tight spots by pretending not to understand the questions being asked of him. He comes into several defining tasks and jobs by virtue of being in the right place or meeting the right people at the right time. As he describes his inexorable march through time and life, he characterizes choices that he made of his own free will (including several murders) as things that just happened to him. 

This is not a seamless movie. Admirable as it is to see Scorsese committing to self-contained scenes that often unfurl like deadpan comedy sketches, the many digressions, marvelous as they are, come at the expense of fleshing out the canvas. And even at three-and-a-half hours, certain aspects feel undernourished. Major supporting players like Keitel (as Philadelphia crime boss Angelo Bruno), Cannavale (as Felix "Skinny Razor" DiTullio) and Ray Romano (as Teamster lawyer Bill Bufalino, whose daughter’s wedding provides a pretext for Frank to take a car trip that literalizes the idea of life as a journey) all register as visual and emotional presences, especially when you first meet them. But it’s not always easy to understand who they are as people, or what role they’re playing in this narrative besides sharing space with the leads. (Pesci, who hasn’t acted onscreen since Taylor Hackford's 2010 film " Love Ranch ," makes a much stronger impression as Frank’s mentor Russell Bufalino, boss of the Northeastern Pennsylvania-based Bufalino crime family; he’s as quiet and controlled as his “ GoodFellas ” and “ Casino ” characters were obnoxious and volatile.)

The overwhelming maleness of the story also hurts it in the long run, notwithstanding the intentionality of this choice (the film is narrated entirely by Frank, and he’s barely interested in life outside of his work in a world of men). As Russell’s wife Carrie, Narducci has brilliant moments early on, mainly in car trip flashbacks, passive-aggressively hassling her husband to make Frank, the driver, pull over so she can smoke; but she becomes a non-presence after that. Kurtzuba (as Frank’s wife Mary) and Anna Paquin (as the grown-up version of his daughter Peggy, who saw many things she shouldn’t have) are largely mute, almost ghostly presences. There’s nothing innately unaccceptable about stories focusing mainly on men (or women, as in the current “ Hustlers ”). But at the same time, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Scorsese’s two greatest Mafia pictures, “GoodFellas” and “Casino,” carve out substantial space for wives, girlfriends, mothers and daughters, and feature indelible lead performances by actresses (respectively, Lorraine Bracco in “GoodFellas” and Sharon Stone in “Casino”) that energize and transform the material, exploding the hero’s lives like the bombs that roast vintage cars in “The Irishman.” 

As for the de-aging technology, it's not there yet. I don't think it's been there yet in any movie, though your mileage will vary. But if the results are sometimes distracting in "The Irishman," they're no more distracting than, say, then-fortysomething Pesci and De Niro in "Goodfellas" playing twenty-something versions of themselves. And Scorsese never gets too hung up on that kind of thing anyway—he's legendary for letting obvious continuity errors slide because he's more interested in continuity of tone and emotion—so here, as in his other epics, it's best to just roll with it. 

All that having been said, anyone who worried that Scorsese was dipping into the Sunday gravy one too many times will be reassured by the tonal originality of what’s been achieved here. More so than any other Scorsese crime picture—and this is saying a lot—“The Irishman” confirms him as one of the greatest living comedy directors who isn’t described as such, and De Niro as one of the great scene-stealing straight men. His byplay with Pacino, Pesci, Keitel and all the rest is masterfully acted and edited by Schoonmaker. Much of it is a gangland “Who’s on first?” routine, or the “Joey Scala/Joey Clams” exchange between Keitel and De Niro in “ Mean Streets ." Zaillian’s script is filled to bursting with quotable lines. And every few minutes you get a marvelous bit of character-based comedy acting, such as Frank’s blank-faced concentration as he plots their long car trip on a map with a red Sharpie marker, or a wild-eyed Hoffa glaring at a nemesis during a union awards banquet while sawing though a bloody steak.

The net effect is more unsettling and melancholia-inducing than you might have expected. Frank’s storytelling aligns him with the most mesmerizing unreliable narrators in Scorsese’s voice-over-heavy career. As in so many Scorsese films, what matters most is the relationship between this movie and its audience. It's about the difference between what the film shows us and how Frank describes it: the words and tone he chooses, and—most strikingly—what decides to gloss over, or present without comment. 

How much agency, how much moral choice, how much say , do we truly have in our lives? Is a sin still a sin if we don’t recognize the concept of sin, or lend credence the idea that some deeds are innately right and others innately wrong? Does it make sense to distinguish between murder and killing, or gangland mayhem and warfare as practiced by nations? Or are these just mental constructs designed by authority figures, meant to sanction acts approved by the state and condemn them when practiced outside its purview? Is Frank a sociopath who is a great killer because he doesn’t feel emotions or have relationships in the way that most people do? (De Niro italicizes so little of Frank that we often don’t know what Frank thinks of the things he does.) Or is it possible that violence, even killing/murder, is just one more type of activity, forbidden by rules of most societies, yet still widely practiced, and compatible with friendship, love, and loyalty? Are a killer’s tears at losing a friend or loved one counterfeit, a performance of grief? Is his smile on his wedding day a performance of love? And even if these are performances, what’s the substantive difference between performing feelings and experiencing them? Is it different from deciding to become a soldier or a mobster, then being accepted as that thing, and eventually feeling as if you are that thing?

Scorsese, Zaillian and Schoonmaker don’t answer these or other questions. By the time we reach the movie’s detached and unfussy final image, we still aren’t sure quite what to make of Frank, or this sprawling tale. And I don’t believe we’re supposed to. The movie expects us to complete it on our own by thinking back on it later, and discussing it with others. Scorsese is the last big-budget filmmaker who mostly declines to hand meaning to viewers. And in his crime films, he refuses to boldface why he’s telling stories about self-serving criminals or assure us that he personally condemns them. “The Irishman” keeps with that tradition. The opportunity to sit with the movie later is the main reason to see it. For all its borderline-vaudevillian verbal humor and occasional eruptions of ultraviolence (often done in a single take, and shot from far away) it feels like as much of a collection of thought prompts and images of contemplation as Scorsese’s somber religious epics “ The Last Temptation of Christ ,” “ Kundun ,” and “ Silence .” 

God is as tight-lipped as Frank. 

This review was filed from the 2019 New York Film Festival on September 27th, 2019.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film credits.

The Irishman (2019)

Rated R for pervasive language and strong violence.

209 minutes

Robert De Niro as Frank 'The Irishman' Sheeran

Al Pacino as Jimmy Hoffa

Joe Pesci as Russell Bufalino

Harvey Keitel as Angelo Bruno

Bobby Cannavale as Joe Gallo

Ray Romano as Bill Bufalino

Stephen Graham as Anthony Provenzano

Kathrine Narducci as Carrie Bufalino

Anna Paquin as Peggy Sheeran

• Martin Scorsese

Writer (book)

• Charles Brandt
• Steve Zaillian

Cinematographer

• Rodrigo Prieto
• Thelma Schoonmaker
• Robbie Robertson

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‘The Irishman’ Review: The Mob’s Greatest Hits, in a Somber Key

Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci star in Martin Scorsese’s monumental, elegiac tale of violence, betrayal, memory and loss.

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‘The Irishman’ | Anatomy of a Scene

Martin scorsese narrates a sequence from his film, featuring robert de niro, al pacino and joe pesci..

“I’m Martin Scorsese. And I made the movie, ‘The Irishman.’” “It is an honor for me to be here tonight to present this award to my dear friend, Mr. Frank Sheeran.” “We’re talking about a sequence that takes place in the Latin Casino. You have this wonderful reception for Frank Sheeran, who, really, it’s a highlight of his life. All the representatives of the power structure of that part of the country are there to celebrate him, supposedly. And it really is obviously— it’s for the union, it’s for Hoffa, and it’s to support Hoffa over Tony Provenzano. And it’s to show his support for Jimmy, and Jimmy’s support for Frank.” [APPLAUSE] “The highlight of my life. Thank you very— very, very much. And this man, James Riddle Hoffa, is the guy that gets the job done.” “Underlying all that, you have the darker elements, which are the men who are in real control of the situation.” “Any case, from the deepest part of my heart, I thank you all. Because I don’t really deserve all this. But I have bursitis, and I don’t deserve that, either.” “The structure of the scene is all about the looks. The dialogue doesn’t matter until you have this extraordinary moment, I think, between Russell and Frank, where Russell gives Frank this special ring that only three people have. And so for me, the playing of the scene had to be weaving all the sense of a celebration, so to speak, or family gathering, weaving all that around these beats, all strung together by the music: Jerry Vale.” ”(SINGING) Please—” “It has a very melodramatic tragedy to it. You know, a sweetness and a sadness at the same time.” ”(SINGING) Say you and your Spanish eyes—” “It’s like you go to an event, and there are factions. There are factions. And one faction may be polite, but they’re not going to be smiling too much. But they’re there. During that time, certain things are said. Looks are given, which are harder than words. But the main look’s Anna Paquin. A whole sequence revolves around Anna’s— Peggy, that is— picking up of the subtext of what’s going on. There is trouble happening. There are problems. And she knows— I mean, particularly even Anna Paquin said, when she did the dancing shot, and she looks over, and she’s says, I never saw looks like that from people. She said it chilled her as a person.” “Only three people in the world have one of these, and only one of them is Irish. I have one, Angelo has one, and now you have one.” “So really it’s about the balancing and the editing of the frames, which encompass medium shots— hardly any close-ups. Usually medium to medium close-up, like right below the shoulders up. That entails seeing a little more of the body language rather than giant close-ups. The reason for that is the atmosphere and the environment around them has to be present in the frame, because that affects them. And there you see them in that environment and that atmosphere. If it’s too close, I think you objectify it in a way. You push the audience away. But one of the hardest things to do was to get them in the frame in the wide shot, looking down, as Jerry Vale is singing in the background. They’re like the gods overlooking this world that they created in a way. There’s one shot— from their point of view, with a long lens— of Jimmy walking around and suddenly saying hello to Angelo Russo, played by Harvey Keitel. The reason is a personal reason. And that was that Harvey Keitel and Al Pacino were never in the same frame together in any movie.” “Things have gotten that with our friend again. And some people are having serious problems with him. And it’s at a point where you’re going to have to talk to him and tell him it’s what it is.” “Once I settled on the size of the frame and the size of the people in the frame, I know that, then, it was really myself and my editor, Thelma, in the editing room, playing with the dialogue and playing with the looks and the pauses— the pauses and the silences.” “These are the higher-ups.” “Well, he’s a higher-up, too. I mean, there’s no one—” “Not like this. You know that. Oh, come on, Frank. If they can whack a president, they can whack a president of the union. You know it, and I know it.”

By A.O. Scott

One of the all-time canonical moments in the work of Martin Scorsese — and, therefore, in all of American cinema — is the two-and-a-half-minute sequence in “Goodfellas” sometimes known as “the Copa shot.” In a single, unbroken take, the camera, gliding and swiveling to absorb every detail along the way, follows Henry Hill (played by Ray Liotta) and his sweetheart, Karen (Lorraine Bracco), from Henry’s car, through the kitchen and into the hurly-burly of the nightclub, accompanied by the sound of the Crystals singing “Then He Kissed Me.” For Henry, an up-and-coming mobster — and also for the viewer, hovering in the limbo between bystander and accomplice — the arrival at the Copa is a pure and potent dose of gangster glamour. Life is good.

The opening shot of “ The Irishman ,” Scorsese’s latest long-form crime story (opening Friday in theaters around the country), evokes that earlier scene and turns it inside out. Once again, the camera floats down corridors and around corners accompanied by a radio hit from the past. This time it’s the tune “In the Still of the Night” by the Five Satins , and we’re in a nursing home. We make our way past doctors and orderlies, our attention finally coming to rest in a quiet, nearly empty room furnished with institutional tables and chairs. An old man is waiting for us. Like Henry Hill, he’s going to tell the tale of his unsavory associates and criminal doings — a meandering reminiscence that will touch on some notorious historical episodes, many of them involving murder.

But the mood is different this time around, even if we recognize a few of the faces (more on those faces shortly). The anecdotes, some of which are funny, some horrifying, are edged with a bleak sense of absurdity and shadowed by the rapid onset of oblivion. Death is close at hand. The next three and a half hours will feel like a long, final breath in fading light. The light is managed by the cinematographer, Rodrigo Prieto . The passing of time is handled by the editor, Thelma Schoonmaker. The movie is long and dark: long like a novel by Dostoyevsky or Dreiser, dark like a painting by Rembrandt.

The man, whose name is Frank Sheeran — he’s the Irishman we’ve come to see, and he’s played by Robert De Niro — has some information to share about something everyone used to care about, a piece of information that at one time could have gotten him and a lot of other people killed. Actually a lot of people did get killed. One of them might have been James Riddle Hoffa, better known as Jimmy, the former president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

Nowadays, Frank reckons, the name Jimmy Hoffa doesn’t mean much anymore. Back in the decades after World War II, though, when organized labor and organized crime were mighty forces in the land, the name stirred fear and admiration in the hearts of politicians, racketeers and ordinary working stiffs. “In the ’50s, he was like Elvis,” Frank says of the man who was his boss, friend and eventual quarry. “In the ’60s he was bigger than the Beatles.”

In 1975, Hoffa vanished, and speculation about what happened to him was for many years the stuff of wild conspiracy theories and stand-up-comedy routines. Jack Nicholson played him in a 1992 biopic , written by David Mamet and directed by Danny DeVito.

“The Irishman,” with a blustering, showboating, disarmingly tender Al Pacino in the Hoffa role, isn’t competing with that movie, or trying to correct the historical record. There was a real Frank Sheeran, who really did claim involvement in Hoffa’s demise, though not everyone believes him . Scorsese, working from Steve Zaillian’s adaptation of a book by Charles Brandt (called “I Heard You Paint Houses” ), assembles a kind of gangland greatest hits. The pun is intended: this is a history of the United States in a few dozen killings. Some are obscure, like the whacking of a guy named Whispers (not to be confused with a different guy named Whispers) who stuck his beak in the wrong birdbath. Others still have a garish tabloid glow, like the shooting of “Crazy Joe” Gallo at Umberto’s Clam House in Manhattan . Add the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the list, along with Hoffa’s disappearance.

But public affairs and Cosa Nostra chronicles aren’t really what this movie is about. Don’t get me wrong: there is plenty of grisly, crazy mob lore, blood and tomato sauce, guys with colorful nicknames, episodes that wander away from the main plot. Every so often the screen will freeze and a note will appear supplying the date and manner of a minor character’s eventual death. These aren’t facts for the final exam, but part of a deeper, sadder lesson that has to do with the inevitability of loss. The loss of life, yes, but also the erosion of meaning that accompanies the fading of experience into memory and memory into nothing.

What interests Scorsese — what he has always cared most about — aren’t facts but feelings. Like many of his other films, “The Irishman” spends some time mapping the structures of power and the codes of behavior that govern its particular slice of reality. Frank, making his living as a truck driver in Pennsylvania after serving in World War II, becomes a soldier in the Philadelphia mob, working mostly for a local capo named Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci). Russell, whose cousin (Ray Romano) is a mob lawyer, connects Frank with Hoffa. Through flush times and lean, the Bay of Pigs and Watergate, the two bosses command Frank’s loyalty for the next 20 years or so.

The business of graft, extortion and influence peddling occupies all these men, but “The Irishman” finds its emotional center in the vicissitudes of their friendship. This is Scorsese’s least sentimental picture of mob life, and for that reason his most poignant. Hoffa, for all his windy belligerence, is also petty to the point of neurosis. He can’t stand it when an upstart Teamster rival, Anthony Provenzano (Stephen Graham), shows up late for a meeting wearing shorts. Hoffa ruthlessly focuses on money and power, unless there’s the possibility of an ice cream sundae.

I don’t mean that Pacino and Scorsese make Hoffa lovable, but rather that they render him at human scale. Russell and Frank, big shots in their own right, are small men too. In addition to checking in periodically on Frank in his lonely senescence, the movie repeatedly jumps back to a fateful road trip he and Russell took with their wives (Stephanie Kurtzuba and Kathrine Narducci), a journey as intoxicated with the banality of midcentury, middle-class married life as a John Updike story.

And it’s in those quiet moments that the elegiac power of “The Irishman” really takes hold. The forward motion of time leads to only one destination, but movies can make it run backward too. Scorsese has digitally “de-aged” his principal actors, De Niro in particular, and while the effect takes some getting used to, it doesn’t take you out of the picture any more than makeup or prosthetics might. De Niro’s face looks a little blurry when Frank is supposed to be in his 40s and 50s, but what’s more striking is that the body it’s attached to seems to belong to the actor’s present-day, 76-year-old self.

There is something beautiful and fitting about that incongruity, and also about the presence of so many actors we’ve seen in other Scorsese films. Harvey Keitel shows up, as does Welker White, who was Henry Hill’s babysitter in “Goodfellas” and is Jo Hoffa, Jimmy’s wife, here. Pesci, who has been mostly absent from movies for the past 20 years, is the revelation. He’s lost the strut and the shtick that used to define (and sometimes undermine) his performances, and does everything with his sad, watchful eyes and his lovely, walnut-shell face. When he and De Niro are onscreen together, you believe in the power of art.

But “The Irishman” isn’t sentimental about that, either. It’s a gift for cinephiles, to be sure — it will arrive in theaters on Nov. 1, on Netflix Nov. 27 — but also a somber acknowledgment of limitations. Alongside the story of Frank’s career runs another one, nearly invisible to him, about the price paid by the women in his life, in particular his daughter Peggy. Peggy (played as a child by Lucy Gallina and then by Anna Paquin), is fond of Hoffa and creeped out by Russell. Though she barely says a word, her silence delivers a damning verdict on her father and his world. It also represents a gesture on Scorsese’s part toward some of the stories he hasn’t chosen or known how to tell over the years. That’s another kind of loss.

To watch this movie, especially in its long, graceful final movement, is to feel a circle closing. This isn’t the last film Scorsese will make, or the last film anyone will make about the Mafia in its heyday, but it does arrive at a kind of resting place. Not an easy one, by any means, since what “The Irishman” looks back on is a legacy of violence and waste, of men too hard and mean to be mourned. A monument is a complicated thing. This one is big and solid — and also surprisingly, surpassingly delicate.

The Irishman

Rated R. Everybody dies. Running time: 3 hours 30 minutes.

An earlier version of this article misidentified an actress who appears in “The Irishman.” She is Stephanie Kurtzuba, not Kate Arrington.

How we handle corrections

A.O. Scott is the co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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The Irishman First Reviews: A Mob Movie Masterpiece and One of Scorsese's Finest

Critics say the epic crime drama is everything audiences want from its accomplished director and cast, and it's a serious awards contender..

TAGGED AS: Netflix

Martin Scorsese ’s The Irishman   isn’t just any run-of-the-mill awards season contender. It’s an epic collaboration between some of modern cinema’s most accomplished and celebrated icons, and it’s one of the most anticipated films of the year. So does this crime drama from the director of Goodfellas   and The Departed  —  reuniting here with Robert De Niro , Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel and now working with Al Pacino for the first time — live up to expectations?

Reviews out of the movie’s opening-night premiere at the New York Film Festival are resoundingly positive in that regard. Not even the length or the notorious de-aging special effects can hold down what’s being called one of Scorsese’s best.

Here’s what critics are saying about The Irishman :

Has Scorsese got another gangster masterpiece on his hands ?

It’s the film that, I think, a lot of us wanted to see from Scorsese… rippling with echoes of the director’s previous Mob films but [it] also takes us someplace bold and new. –  Owen Gleiberman, Variety

The Irishman  has both the frenetic swagger of his mob movies and the more contemplative gut wrench of his most spiritual films, like 1988’s  The Last Temptation of Christ  and his most recent film, 2016’s  Silence . –  Alissa Wilkinson, Vox

This is Scorsese’s least sentimental picture of mob life, and for that reason his most poignant. –  A.O. Scott, New York Times

Scorsese is at the top of his game. –  Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post

The Irishman may not be as groundbreaking as Mean Streets or Taxi Driver , but then again, what is? –  Caryn James, BBC.com

So it’s not just another Goodfellas wannabe ?

The Irishman is Martin Scorsese’s best crime movie since Goodfellas … an ideal match of filmmaker and source material. – Eric Kohn, IndieWire

This is not  Goodfellas . This is not  Casino . This is Scorsese at his most reflective, crafting a masterwork that finds the filmmaker reflecting on everything he’s done, and what it’s all amounted to. – Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm

It’s moving in a way  Goodfellas  is not. An old man couldn’t have made that movie, just as a younger one couldn’t have made this one. – Stephanie Zacharek, Time Magazine

(Photo by Netflix)

Is it reminiscent of any other movies?

The Irishman  reminded me a bit of  Unforgiven : It feels, at last, like a critical eulogy for an era of crime fiction that Scorsese and De Niro and Pacino built. – A.A. Dowd, AV Club

There are aspects of  The Irishman  that recall David Lynch’s work on  The Return . – Joe Dieringer, Screen Slate

With stories within stories within stories,  The Irishman  is a little like a mob movie version of  Inception . – Matt Singer, ScreenCrush

Move over  Braveheart . Move over  Air Force One . Move over  Field of Dreams ,  Gladiator ,  The Right Stuff ,  Ben  Freaking  Hur .  The Irishman  could well be Dad Movie of the Century. – Taylor Antrim, Vogue

How are Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci?

De Niro is in top form… he hasn’t been this good in years, and his rather understated performance really carries the movie. – Brett Arnold, Consequence of Sound

Frank Sheeran gives [De Niro] his most satisfying lead role in years. – Eric Kohn, IndieWire

De Niro’s superb performance is a close cousin to his work in GoodFellas . – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

What a joy it is to have Pesci back on the screen and to see him deliver such soulful work in the process…. the film really belongs to Pesci. – Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm

Joe Pesci emerges from retirement to give a superbly measured performance… the polar opposite of the lit-fuse firecrackers Pesci famously portrayed for Scorsese. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

And when they’re together?

De Niro and Pacino play off one another beautifully, with De Niro often playing the calm straight-man to Pacino’s loudmouth comedian. A warmth radiates between the two. – Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm

When [Pesci] and De Niro are onscreen together, you believe in the power of art. – A.O. Scott, New York Times

What about Al Pacino?

Pacino arrives almost a third of the way into the film and instantly electrifies it. – Caryn James, BBC.com

Pacino shines among an incredible cast. [It’s] his best display of rampant emotion and thoughtful characterization since  Heat . He is Hoffa. – Robert Daniels, 812filmreviews

More than just a believably magnetic Hoffa, Pacino kicks the film into the realm of pure, delicious crazy. – Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out

Pacino’s over-the-top presence borders on parody, but at the same time, feels attuned to the larger-than-life shadow that Hoffa cast in his prime. – Eric Kohn, IndieWire

How distracting is the de-aging effect?

Is the de-aging process perfect? Of course not… the process is still amazing, and there’s a strange, singular way that it works for the movie. – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

The de-aging is… pretty good. I’d say the best I’ve seen so far… you do get used to it. – Mike Ryan, Uproxx

The eyes adjust to the illusion. Moreover, this magic trick speaks to the unreliable unreality of memory itself… a “problem” with (potentially accidental) resonance. – A.A. Dowd, AV Club

After a while, you adjust, or rather, you get tired of probing the slightly-off evidence of your eyes and the headache it produces. There’s a lot of fun to distract you. – Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out

Now and then I had to stave off a PTSD flashback to Robert Zemeckis’  Polar Express . – Stephanie Zacharek, Time Magazine

What about the runtime ?

The film, which clocks in at 209 minutes — even longer than  The Return of the King  and  Avengers: Endgame —  barely feels its length. – Karen Han, Polygon

This is a remarkably brisk three-and-a-half hours — Scorsese, at a ripe 76, still directs with the energy of a hungry young filmmaker. – A.A. Dowd, AV Club

The material would have been better served by losing an hour or more to run at standard feature length, or bulking up on supporting-character and plot detail to flesh out a series. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

I’m not sure  The Irishman  needed all 209 minutes… even when the characters are younger, [it] moves at a leisurely (or even elderly) pace. – Matt Singer, ScreenCrush

How’s the pacing?

Its last half-hour is deeply moving in a way that creeps up on you, and it’s then that you see what Scorsese was working toward all along. – Stephanie Zacharek, Time Magazine

The Irishman  doesn’t fully engage until its second act. – Robert Daniels, 812filmreviews

[Steve] Zaillian’s messy script, an ambitious assemblage of timelines, takes its time to fully immerse the viewer into its world… the second half is more lively. – Jordan Ruimy, World of Reel

It’s a film that only gets further under your skin after you leave the theater (or close your Netflix browser, as the case may be). – Karen Han, Polygon

Does it need to be seen in a theater?

The film, by design, is episodic in a way that’s small-screen-friendly. – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

The movie’s self-indulgent running time of three-and-a-half hours will pose challenges for home-screen viewing. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

It should go without saying but yes, if you can, definitely see a new Martin Scorsese movie on the big screen first. – Frazier Tharpe, Complex

What about the film’s female characters?

If one fault could be found with Scorsese’s latest work, it’s the waste of intriguing women characters. – Robert Daniels, 812filmreviews

For much of  The Irishman , the women are at the margins — wives and daughters, always around, rarely saying anything. This isn’t atypical in Scorsese’s work, which rarely centers on women. – Alissa Wilkinson, Vox

The movie lacks a strong female voice but such limitations speak to Sheeran’s character flaws more than those of The Irishman . – Eric Kohn, IndieWire

It’s a shoo-in for the Oscars, though, isn’t it?

In terms of the Oscar race,  The Irishman  is what we thought it was, a likely Best Picture contender with a chance at a truckload of nominations. – Gregory Ellwood, The Playlist

If the Best Supporting Actor Oscar came down to Pacino and Pesci, I have no idea who I’d support. Both performances are transcendently good. – Brett Arnold, Consequence of Sound

The Irishman  opens in limited release on November 1 and releases on Netflix on November 27.

The Irishman (2019) 95%

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The Irishman Reviews

This is not a blatant retread of films like Taxi Driver and The Gangs of New York. The film has shots or sequences that mirror those films, but it brings something new to the table from a thematic or technical standpoint.

Full Review | May 10, 2024

The Irishman has the same Scorsese beats we have come to love but moves to a noticeably staggered rhythm in it's device of storytelling, laboured performances and reluctance to commit to the brutal energy of Goodfellas.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 20, 2024

The Irishman tests patience with its runtime and less effective storytelling on a second watch. CGI de-aging distracts, yet Scorsese's touch shines in cinematography.

One of the most important characteristics of the gangster genre is that we access the story through the point of view of the protagonist, in this case Frank Sheeran, who, is an immigrant. Through the narrative resource of the first person...

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | Jan 27, 2024

Loyalty can’t exist without betrayal, and Scorsese explores that dichotomy with surprising empathy. When Hoffa refuses to accommodate the will of the mafia, he triggers a Steinbeckian tragedy on par with Of Mice and Men.

Full Review | Jul 20, 2023

It is a personal view for an aging man who feels guilty for his betrayal and pays a hefty price...

Full Review | Mar 2, 2023

Even though [The Irishman is] extremely long, the way in which it depicts the themes of brotherhood and loyalty is superb.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Jan 22, 2023

A genuine testament of art of making cinema as art. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 7, 2022

We’re watching characters decay over five decades (though many don’t live long enough to have that option) in just under three and a half hours, and I don’t know who wouldn’t be moved by that.

Full Review | Dec 2, 2022

In a lot of ways, this film is the antithesis to “Goodfellas”, a eulogy to the gangster genre the same way “Unforgiven” was a eulogy to the western genre.

Full Review | Nov 24, 2022

An All American epic that gains its import from its accumulation of seconds and minutes and years -- those tracking shots turned to myth, and we, a country of endless highways stretched end to end, always ending somewhere, on some face

Full Review | Nov 17, 2022

My obsession with Scorsese and this genre might not be healthy anymore. To the point where I found every minute of this movie interesting. The mob epic this director wanted to give us, throwing homages to the cinema that made him. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Oct 21, 2022

Scorsese’s maturity and range as a storyteller is sure handed throughout. There isn’t a single misplaced camera angle, or, despite the film’s long length, a throwaway take.

Full Review | Oct 18, 2022

The Irishman is Scorsese’s Gangster Epic: A big, grand, ambitious rags to riches mob tale that blurs the lines between loyalty, friendship, and business. It might be the quickest 209-minutes in the history of cinema. Joe Pesci, welcome back.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 22, 2022

You could say “The Irishman” is above all things a tragedy. Underneath its veneer of wise guy tradition and violence lies the story of a man facing the music for his embrace of mob life and neglect of his family.

The best comparison one could make to The Irishman is David Lean's similarly epic-sized Lawrence of Arabia (1962), a biography that examines its subject for four hours before conceding to its unknowability.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 23, 2022

The Irishman gives its audience so many emotions and is poignant, funny, violent, and beautiful. It is a modern-day mobster masterpiece from a master of his craft.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 18, 2022

A towering achievement in storytelling not just cinema.

Full Review | Original Score: 90/100 | Jan 14, 2022

Irishman represents, with its somber and mournful mood, what may be Scorsese's farewell to the sort of gangster tales that largely made his reputation.

Full Review | Sep 18, 2021

A wonderful three and a half hours... a very human story.

Full Review | Sep 16, 2021

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Movie Reviews

Movie review: 'the irishman' is an epic with the feel of history.

Bob Mondello

Martin Scorsese's three-and-a-half-hour mob movie, "The Irishman," stars Robert De Niro as a killer for hire, and Al Pacino as Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa.

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Martin Scorsese brings a life's work to his starry, bloody, and very long drama The Irishman

There's an enormity to almost everything about The Irishman : the casting, the killing, the Iditarod run time. But it's not the blood splatter or the tracking shots or even the much-discussed CG de-aging effects (which are impressive, if not a little unsettling) that stay; it's seeing these faces we've watched for nearly half a century — a sort of craggy-cinematic Mount Rushmore — come together again, most likely for the last time.

One face is actually here for the first time, which seems hard to believe: Al Pacino and Martin Scorsese have never worked together until now. So it makes a certain sense that the director would bring him on, finally, to play a figure as towering as Jimmy Hoffa, the legendary Teamster whose 1975 disappearance became one of the late 20th century's most enduring mysteries.

It's Frank Sheeran ( Robert De Niro ) who's the ostensible center of both the movie and the 2004 memoir on which it's based, I Heard You Paint Houses . Sheeran's father was in fact a house painter, though in his own future line of work it came to mean something else (if there's blood on the wall, it's because he put it there; not with a paintbrush but a gun).

A WWII veteran and short-haul truck driver, Sheeran gained favor with Philadelphia Mob bosses Russell Bufalino ( Joe Pesci ) and Angelo Bruno (Harvey Keitel), eventually becoming one of their most trusted assassins and enforcers. He also, with their blessing, was assigned as a sort of body man and best friend to Hoffa, whose fortunes as the head of organized labor in America were deeply entangled with organized crime.

As Scorsese hopscotches across cities and decades, often in the service of a dizzyingly large number of plot turns, characters, and narrative cul de sacs, it's hard not to wonder whether the movie — underwritten entirely by Netflix in the anything-goes age of streaming — would have made more sense as a limited series. (The real-life story would certainly support it, and surely there must be reams left over on the cutting-room floor; though it also feels a little like sacrilege to question his famously discerning editor, Thelma Schoonmaker.)

There's a sense too, that The Irishman is a kind of caps-lock Scorsese — the greatest hits of his career revisited once more, with feeling. The movie's passing parade of gangsters and goodfellas don't have the electric specificity of 2013's The Wolf of Wall Street or the still, hymn-like beauty of 2016's Silence . Babies are born; deals are forged; doubles are crossed. Men go to prison (though they call it "school"), women smoke cigarettes (and don't speak much), and kids (played in adulthood by, among others, Anna Paquin and Jesse Plemons) serve mostly as bystanders, looking on in vague confusion or with the harder squint of those who've seen more than they really want to know.

It all becomes a bit of muddle for a while midway through; one that's not nearly as compelling as the acting itself, which is largely phenomenal, frequently surprising, and often more than a little heartbreaking. As Bufalino, Pesci — who's hardly been on screen for over a decade — abandons his hair-trigger intensity for a sort of gentle, contained menace, his eyes slow-blinking behind enormous glasses and his mouth pursed in a thoughtful moue. He doesn't want to do bad things, but sometimes bad things are necessary for the order of things, you know?

Pacino plays Hoffa as a man with his own indelible code of honor: Bristly, driven, and fiercely intelligent, he has a soft spot for kids and ice cream sundaes and a blind one for the limits of his own power (which went nearly to the top — though in the end, clearly, not high enough). He often feels like the heart of the movie, if Frank is its muscle; for much of his performance, De Niro is stoic to the point of impenetrability, an Easter Island statue in wingtips and a rayon bowling shirt.

It's only as the film enters its final devastating chapters that the full weight of Frank's actions begin to register as something more than names on a coroner's ledger. And that's where The Irishman finds its deepest, truest place: not as a whiz-bang Mafia caper or a sprawling, starry history lesson, but as a poignant meditation on mortality — both for the real lives unfolding on onscreen, and for the actors who've spent their own lives turning these stories into something more than real; they've made them ours. B+

( The Irishman premiered last night at the New York Film Festival, and will be in limited theatrical release beginning Nov. 1 before coming to Netflix Nov. 27)

Related content:

• Martin Scorsese, Al Pacino discuss how they crafted the time-shifting magic of The Irishman
• How Joe Pesci was talked out of retirement for his first movie role in 9 years
• Watch Robert De Niro and Al Pacino go to war with J.F.K. in new trailer for The Irishman

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‘The Irishman’ Review: Martin Scorsese Directs His Best Crime Movie Since ‘Goodfellas’

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It takes less than five minutes to establish “ The Irishman ” in Martin Scorsese ‘s unmistakable voice. The camera glides into the retirement home where wistful former Philadelphia hit man Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) begins a sprawling recollection of his glory days as right-hand man to Sicilian mafioso Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) and corrupt union overlord Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). With Sheeran’s voiceover as a guide, the movie flashes back to an innocuous road trip with Sheeran in the driver’s seat and Bufalino bickering with his wife about smoking in the car. The mood is at once taut and funny, the essence of Scorsese’s ability to humanize the mob as prickly macho men just a few notes shy of lovable. In that fundamental disconnect — between endearing people and the psychotic world they represent — the movie presents a fascinating onramp to America’s obsession with organized crime.

“The Irishman” is Martin Scorsese’s best crime movie since “Goodfellas,” and a pure, unbridled illustration of what has made his filmmaking voice so distinctive for nearly 50 years. Forget that it’s a touch too long and the much-ballyhooed de-aging technology doesn’t always cast a perfect spell; the movie zips along at such a satisfying clip that its flaws rarely amount to more than mild speed bumps along the way.

There have been flashes of the “Goodfellas” blend in the last three decades, with the pitch-black comedy of hapless anti-heroes driving “Casino,” The Departed,” and “The Wolf of Wall Street,” not to mention lesser entries like “Gangs of New York,” and almost all of them derive their authenticity from a historical foundation. However, “The Irishman” features an ideal match of filmmaker and source material: Scorsese and screenwriter Steven Zaillian have crafted a faithful adaptation Sheeran’s 2004 quasi-memoir “I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank ‘The Irishman’ Sheeran and Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa,” which takes him at his dubious word, and it provides a definitive template for Scorsese’s best kind of character study. Sheeran talks like he was born into the “Goodfellas” expanded universe.

The book, written by former attorney Charles Brandt, was crafted as first-person deathbed confession. As such, it unfolds largely in the first person, with Sheeran recalling his rise from running meat-truck scams in Philly to high-profile contract killer, and he takes credit for more than one infamous hit. Sheeran positions himself on the sidelines — and sometimes at the center — of the biggest mob power players in the country during the height of its influence, as International Brotherhood of Teamsters president Hoffa engaged in a decade-spanning struggle for dominance while Attorney General Bobby Kennedy chased him at every turn. Hoffa famously vanished in 1975 and was declared dead in absentia seven years later; Sheeran’s confession that he killed his longtime pal doesn’t totally pass muster, but fretting over the details misses the appeal of this alleged fabrication.

In fact, many of Sheeran’s revelations have been questioned and even debunked entirely. In the context of “The Irishman,” he may as well be the Forrest Gump of felons, encapsulating his era and the brutish masculine personalities that defined it. Sheeran’s claims range from a central role in the Bay of Pigs invasion to pulling the trigger on Hoffa himself, but none of that has to check out for “The Irishman” to take cues from his narrative and make it click.    

Sheeran’s story has been reenacted within a daunting timeline that doesn’t exactly demand the three hours and 29 minutes it takes up, but “The Irishman” makes the bulk of them count. Yes, the ambitious, headline-grabbing decision to use costly CGI to make De Niro and others look like their younger selves is initially off-putting: When Sheeran remembers his first encounter with Bufalino in the early ’60s, when the unassuming mafioso helped the younger WWII veteran fix his engine at a filling station, De Niro’s wrinkle-free cheeks practically look like software code incarnate, and the character’s large frame bears little resemblance to De Niro’s appearances in work from the actual period. But as the movie careens through the years with subtle updates to Sheeran’s look, the effect becomes more feature than bug — a signifier of an entire movie taking place within one man’s iffy recollections.

Other key figures undergo jarring transformations: As the affable Bufalino, Pesci shrivels into a wizened flesh pile by the closing act, but it’s a reasonable transition for the aging crime boss and he certainly looks the part. But Pacino is the greatest beneficiary of his approach: At first glance, he’s only subtracted a handful of decades to look like a pretty believable guy in his fifties, and only has to age another decade before he meets his eventual fate.

“The Irishman” takes its time explaining the way Hoffa had any reason to notice Sheeran in the first place. The movie begins with absorbing account of his relationship to Bufalino, as he gradually comes to understand the mafia ecosystem and funnels his wartime skills to new use on the streets. Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker work their usual montage magic, threading together jazzy breakdowns of Sheeran’s hit-man routine with expert comic timing. (As Sheeran drops one gun after another into the same canal, he suggests the ensuing pileup “could arm a small country.”)

Still, when Hoffa shows up around the 45-minute mark, he instantly takes charge.   (Sheeran, ever the military man, compares his new boss to General Patton.) Pacino’s over-the-top presence borders on parody, but at the same time, feels attuned to the larger-than-life shadow that Hoffa cast in his prime. At his best, the Teamster folk hero embodies the fury of his moment: He throws monstrous tantrums over tardiness and rages to his minions about Bobby (or “Booby”) Kennedy’s “Get Hoffa” squad, dotes over his docile adopted son Chucky (Jesse Plemons, of course), and makes aggressive attempts to keep Sheeran by his side. Sheeran and Hoffa’s hilarious odd-couple dynamic reaches a fever pitch when Hoffa loses it on a roomful of “dumb motherfuckers,” inadvertently hurting Sheeran’s feelings until he offers a frantic mea culpa to win him back.

For a while, at least. Like the book, “The Irishman” chronicles the way Sheeran’s divided allegiances to Hoffa and Bufalino forces the henchman to a tough choice once Hoffa alienates his mob peers with a late-career attempt to retake the union. In the meantime, Sheeran undergoes a credible transition into a confident power broker himself, with guidance from savvy union lawyer Bill Bufalino (a slippery Ray Romano), who guides him through various courtroom snafus. All along, Sheeran never strays from reminders of his main gig, including one fast-paced recollection of his hit on “Crazy Joe” Gallo (Sebastian Maniscalo) in a famously bloody murder at Umerto’s Clam House in Little Italy.   Those details remain suspect, but not in the confines of the movie, where Sheeran’s eventual assignment to take out Hoffa arrives as a natural result of the jobs leading up to it.

This much is true: Hoffa did time for jury tampering, got out of jail a few years later, and exacerbated tension with the mob when he attempted to reclaim his union presidency. Few dispute that this precipitated his downfall, and Scorsese follows Hoffa’s declining popularity as a slo-mo tragedy undercut by humorous asides. Sheeran’s own regrets over the Hoffa situation are established by their buddy dynamic early on, which includes more than one scene of these two iconic actors talking strategy after hours in their pajamas (believe it or not, they’re actually kind of charming).

But Hoffa’s constant need to dominate every conversation almost always steals the show. One simmering argument with rival Teamsters leader Tony Provenzano (Stephen Graham) is practically a standalone short film defined by passive-aggressive ribbing that culminates in a clumsy brawl that plays like a close cousin of Pesci’s iconic “like a clown” speech in “Goodfellas.”

Zaillian hasn’t delivered a script this polished since “Moneyball,” and “The Irishman” is loaded with amusing quips and snazzy timing, from a gag about “the Italian Mayflower” to the discussion of two ill-fated criminals both named Whispers that devolves into an unexpected “Who’s on first?” routine. Some of the squabbling sticks around too long, but there’s too much appeal to watching these actors own their archetypes for the scenery-chewing moments to drag.

It’s all a grand setup, anyway, as “The Irishman” dovetails into a very different movie for its final gripping hour. That’s when the circumstances around Hoffa’s disappearance come together in a disquieting buildup worthy of Robert Bresson — the slow trickle of audiovisual details, from closeups of handguns to rumbling car engines, contribute to the encroaching dread. Scorsese lingers a bit much on the fallout, but the melancholic, soulful coda allows De Niro to drop the de-aging facade and deliver a masterclass on the loneliness of old age. As the character grows estranged from his grown daughter (Anna Paquin, who says little but explains much with her eyes) and shrinks into a nursing home, Sheeran’s entire journey becomes a dark joke: He’s spent the whole movie explaining how he became a legend in his own mind, and eventually, he’s trapped by it.

By contrast, “The Irishman” is alive with Scorsese’s trademark style. His third outing with cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto is their showiest collaboration. One delightful tracking shot captures a barbershop hit that begins at the center of the crime and ends up resting on a bouquet of flowers; elsewhere, the camera swoops through court proceedings and ballroom dances, carried along by jazzy music cues that range from Bill Doggett to Fats Domino. Schoonmaker’s hand is more deeply felt here than it has been in Scorsese’s work for some time: His longest narrative feature has an elegance that suggests every intention of keeping the sprawling tower of events from toppling over.

Scorsese does get away with some bold devices, none more notable than a running bit where onscreen text documents the morbid fates of various supporting characters. The device is mostly comedic, driving home the way the death toll stems from a testosterone-fueled power struggle of white men in suits. The movie lacks a strong female voice — Sheeran’s own two wives barely exist in the story — but such limitations speak to Sheeran’s character flaws more than those of “The Irishman.”

De Niro’s always at his best in the context of a Scorsese-mandated tough-guy routine, and Frank Sheeran gives the actor his most satisfying lead role in years. Sheeran appears in virtually every scene, and the story belongs to his colorful worldview the entire time. He may be an aging man telling tall tales, but that puts him in the same category as the one behind the camera. Sheeran, however, lost touch with his world long before he left it. With “The Irishman,” Scorsese proves he’s more alive than ever.

“The Irishman” premiered at the 2019 New York Film Festival. Netflix releases it in U.S. theaters on November 1 and on the platform November 27.

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Remembrance of Kills Past in “The Irishman”

By Anthony Lane

When you are old and gray and full of sleep, what will you talk about? Your grandchildren? The far-off scents and tastes of your own childhood? Your first love? Or that time when you walked into Umberto’s Clam House and shot Crazy Joe, only you didn’t whack him right, so he runs outta there, more like stumbles, and you follow the guy and finish him off on the sidewalk, you know, pop pop, close the deal? The sorry fate of Joe is one of the many events recalled for us by Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), in “The Irishman,” as he sits in a nursing home and summons up remembrance of kills past.

The director of the movie is Martin Scorsese , returning to the rich soil that he has tilled and sown before, in “Mean Streets” (1973), “Goodfellas” (1990), “Casino” (1995), “The Departed” (2006), and the opening episode of “Boardwalk Empire,” in 2010. The new film is adapted by Steven Zaillian from a book by Charles Brandt, partly based on conversations with the real Frank Sheeran, who died in 2003, and titled “I Heard You Paint Houses.” We see the phrase onscreen, writ large in capital letters. Apparently, it’s what you say to a hit man when making polite inquiries into his availability—a useful tip, though not if you are genuinely concerned with redecorating your home.

The tale is told in flashback, either in voice-over or to the camera, with Frank looking directly—and disconcertingly—toward us, as if he were being interviewed for a documentary. To and fro we glide, across the decades, tracing Frank’s ascent, decline, and fall. We see him as a hale young fellow, delivering sides of meat, and then as a fixer for the Bufalinos, who are not, as the name suggests, the reigning monarchs of the mozzarella trade but a noted criminal clan in Philadelphia. Frank, arraigned on a charge of theft, is defended by Bill Bufalino (Ray Romano) and befriended by Bill’s cousin Russell (Joe Pesci), who becomes a soul mate for life. Frank soon graduates from fixing to whacking, with Scorsese, as so often, eschewing grandeur for the downbeat detail—a gun handed over in a brown paper bag, with no more fuss than a sandwich.

The next step up finds Frank being presented to Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), whose command of the Teamsters is absolute, and who needs a bodyguard. It’s instructive to compare Pacino’s Hoffa with Jack Nicholson’s, in the underrated “Hoffa” (1992). Pacino is leaner and louder, with a wary stare in those haunted orbs; Nicholson is more of a bulldog—foursquare, wasting fewer words, and thus, for my money, providing a more tenacious bite. Also, Pacino fails to shed the tic that has pervaded the second half of his career. Whatever the role, he stretches out a word of one syllable into two, or even three, and declaims each syllable at a different pitch. So, as Hoffa, he doesn’t say “fraud.” He says “frahr-aud.” Call it irritable-vowel syndrome, and leave it at that.

Much of “The Irishman,” in its later stages, is consumed by the Hoffalogical—too much, perhaps, what with the added weight of speculation. Hoffa vanished on July 30, 1975, and left no trace; rumors have seethed ever since, and the movie, endorsing claims made by Brandt, in his book, tags Frank as Hoffa’s murderer. Whether or not you buy the thesis, so calm and so remorseless is the clarity with which Scorsese charts the events of that day that you somehow yield to them not as a flight of fancy but as the reconstruction of an established truth. Such is the method of the movie: patient, composed, and cool to the point of froideur. It runs for just under three and a half hours, although, to be honest, it seldom runs. Instead, it maintains a sombre pace, like a mourner in a funeral cortège. Whenever a town car—the hoodlum’s transport of choice—passes before the camera, it looks like a hearse in waiting.

As for Frank, when he’s not wielding a weapon, he likes to stay on the sidelines, keeping his counsel. It’s a joy to see De Niro at his most watchful, after too many films that have diluted his force of concentration, though I could have done without the tinting of his eyes. Gone is the dark Italianate brown of De Niro’s natural irises. New Blue Eyes is here. Short of cladding Frank in shamrock green, it’s hard to think of a less subtle means of ethnic signalling. The movie makes a brazen effort to explain the oddity, by having Russell ask Frank, “How did an Irishman like you get to speak Italian?” To which Frank replies that, in the military, he fought his way through Italy, picking up the lingo along the way. Yeah, just like all those thousands of G.I.s who came back from the war against the Nazis looking tall and blond and talking in fluent German.

This is not the first occasion, of course, on which De Niro has stepped aside from his cultural identity for the sake of a long and chronologically complex gangster flick. In Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984), he was Noodles, who led a gang of Jewish pals through a lifetime of scrapes and misdemeanors. I love that movie, despite its faults, and have to be swept off the floor after every viewing; you can’t blame Scorsese for not trying to match the warmth of Leone’s emotional clutch. “The Irishman” has wider horizons in mind.

For one thing, it keeps glancing outward, to the world beyond the streets of Philadelphia. “Would you like to be a part of this history?” Hoffa says to Frank, as if he knows that they’re all in a movie, and there’s a touch of Zelig in Frank’s peculiar talent for being around whenever a crisis looms. He drives a truckful of arms to the men who are headed for the Bay of Pigs, and his contact at the handover, in Jacksonville, is “a guy with big ears, named Hunt”—E. Howard Hunt, whom Frank later recognizes on TV, during the Watergate hearings. Then, we have the Kennedys. The movie encourages dark thoughts about organized crime and its links to political homicide, and Frank is present when Hoffa orders the Stars and Stripes, flying at half-mast after the death of John F. Kennedy, to be hauled back up the flagpole on the roof of the Teamsters’ headquarters.

As a conspiracist, however, Scorsese is far less full-throated than, say, Oliver Stone , and the quieter and more private moments of “The Irishman” offer a sense of relief. Hoffa and Frank are such boon companions that they share a hotel bedroom, and, as the nation’s most powerful union boss stands there in pajamas, brushing his teeth, the two men seem less like purveyors of menace and more like a nice old married couple. Don’t tell the Bufalinos, but deep inside this movie lurks a sitcom. There is comedy here, but it springs from the rat-a-tat rhythms of Mob talk, veering toward Damon Runyon: “They told the old man to tell me to tell you, that’s what it is.” More than once, Frank is cautioned with the words “No, not that.” Translation: “Don’t rub him out just yet.”

Now and then, in “Mean Streets,” the names of the characters flash up on the screen—“Johnny Boy,” “Charlie,” and so on. The same thing happens in the new film, but with an extra chill: the action freezes for each name, and it’s accompanied by the date and the manner of the character’s future death. (“Phil Testa—blown up by a nail bomb under his porch. March 15, 1981.”) Scorsese, like many of his fellow-masters, from Welles to Almodóvar , has grown ever more interested in the passage of time; in how that passing can be slowed, or in how a simple cut can bridge the chasm of the years. (Leone originally wanted Noodles to be played by Richard Dreyfuss, with James Cagney as his older self.) In the course of “The Irishman,” this quest is aided by technology, with actors digitally rejuvenated and aged. Such tricks are both dazzling and creepy, and, in stressing facial change, they tend to neglect the other, no less telling ways in which we are gradually transformed. When Frank, supposedly still limber and youthful, clambers over rocks to a shoreline, where he can toss away used firearms, his motions betray the tentative and unmistakable stiffness of an older man. Reboot his features all you like; the body does not lie.

If I had to define “The Irishman,” I would say that it’s basically “Wild Strawberries” with handguns. Like Bergman ’s film, from 1957, this one is structured around a road trip. To be exact, Russell drives Frank from Kingston, Pennsylvania, to Detroit. Both of them are elderly, and, as they halt near a truck stop, with a Texaco sign beside it, they realize that they first met there, decades before, when Russell helped Frank start his engine. With that, we are tugged back into the past.

But there’s something else about the journey to Detroit. Frank’s wife, Irene (Stephanie Kurtzuba), and Russell’s wife, Carrie (Kathrine Narducci), who is described as “Mob royalty,” go along for the ride. Their dramatic function is little more than to kvetch about being forbidden to smoke en route, and, when they do get out for a cigarette and a chat, we don’t hear more than scraps of what they say. More flagrant still is the movie’s treatment of Frank’s first wife, Mary (Jennifer Mudge), whom we barely see before he ditches her for Irene. It’s almost as if she’s being introduced in order to be erased, and we are reminded of the grave lack of women at the heart of Scorsese’s work, and of how rarely—with the blazing exceptions of Ellen Burstyn, in “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” (1974), and Sharon Stone, in “Casino”—they are granted the freedom to occupy center stage. More often than not, they dwindle into scolds. Is Scorsese’s place in the pantheon not compromised by this shortfall? Can you imagine Bergman, Ophüls, Cukor, or Mizoguchi accepting such a curb?

To be fair, we have Peggy—Frank’s daughter, Russell’s goddaughter, and, as it were, the conscience of “The Irishman.” Wonderfully played by Lucy Gallina as a child and by Anna Paquin as an adult, she trains her fierce, accusatory gaze upon the male tribe around her, and, after Hoffa’s disappearance, refuses to speak to Frank. The problem is, again, one of gender: Peggy comes and goes like a ghost, scarcely giving utterance to her thoughts, without a single scene to call her own. She is clearly aware that her father is a brute, and as guilty as hell, but the movie leaves us wondering: does she also regard him, for all his prowess, as a loser? If so, she’s not wrong. In real life, Frank Sheeran was a thug and a blowhard, and it’s likely that his confessions, as related to Brandt, were inflated with hot air. In 2005, when police examined the house where Sheeran boasted of having shot Jimmy Hoffa, they did indeed find bloodstains. But the blood was not Hoffa’s. Nice try, Frank.

At seventy-six, and after more than fifty years in the business, Scorsese is still, to some extent, the hyper-smart kid, cradled in the cinema stalls, and lost in awe at the lives—so much tougher and nastier than his own, and so thrillingly uncultured—being led up there onscreen. If “The Irishman” feels sadder and slower than anything he’s done before, it may be because, at last, he’s seeking to reckon with that reverence. Hence the wistful sequences, at the back end of the story, with a decrepit Russell confined to a wheelchair, in prison. Even here, however, amid the creaking pathos, the director can’t quite bring himself to cast doubt upon the credentials of his heroes; the clear implication remains “How are the mighty fallen,” whereas someone like Peggy would question how mighty they were to begin with. That’s the thing with wiseguys. They don’t grow any wiser. They live and die, like the rest of us, just a little before their time. ♦

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By Inkoo Kang

By Richard Brody

Summary The Irishman is an epic saga of organized crime in post-war America told through the eyes of World War II veteran Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), a hustler and hitman who worked alongside some of the most notorious figures of the 20th Century. Spanning decades, the film chronicles one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in American histor ... Read More

Directed By : Martin Scorsese

Written By : Steven Zaillian, Charles Brandt

The Irishman

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Robert De Niro

Frank sheeran, jimmy hoffa, russell bufalino, harvey keitel, angelo bruno, bill bufalino, bobby cannavale, skinny razor, anna paquin, older peggy sheeran, stephen graham, anthony 'tony pro' provenzano, stephanie kurtzuba, irene sheeran, jack huston, robert kennedy, rfk, kathrine narducci, carrie bufalino, jesse plemons, chuckie o'brien, domenick lombardozzi, fat tony salerno, paul herman, whispers ditullio, gary basaraba, frank 'fitz' fitzsimmons, marin ireland, older dolores sheeran, lucy gallina, young peggy sheeran, jonathan morris, assisted living priest, dascha polanco, welker white, josephine 'jo' hoffa, critic reviews.

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The Irishman Is Martin Scorsese’s Most Satisfying Film in Decades

A version of this review originally ran during the New York Film Festival earlier this year. It has since been updated.

Martin Scorsese ranges toward extremes, which is why he’ll be a manic showboater in one movie and practice scrupulous self-abnegation in the next. But his gingerly paced, three-and-a-half-hour The Irishman is something new: a work of self-abnegation set where Scorsese normally showboats — the gangster dens of various crime hubs, among bosses, lackeys, and their families real and “made.” Cast with aging Scorsese vets Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Harvey Keitel, plus a guest star from the other landmark gangster film of the director’s era, Al Pacino, this is an old man’s movie, narrated by the elderly title character, sometime hit man Frank Sheeran (De Niro), from a wheelchair in a Catholic convalescent home. It’s steeped in regret, not so much for things that were done as for things that were done but not felt. This is the first Scorsese movie in which the images don’t seem unified either by fever or by the kind of hard, rigorous focus that is fever’s opposite. It may be the 76-year-old director’s most stylishly daring work: one that’s pointedly sapped of style.

Consider the violence. Shaped around the 1975 killing of Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino), The Irishman has no flashy set-pieces, no whip-pans to carnage. Before a hit in a barbershop, the camera starts on the killers as they step from an elevator and follows them only as far as a flower stand, their gunshots heard but not seen. (What we see are flowers.) It’s strange to experience this kind of detachment in a Scorsese movie — first baffling, then stunning, as we come to realize that this lack of feeling precisely evokes Sheeran’s inner world. The “Irishman” fought in some of the grisliest, most protracted battles in World War II’s European theater (122 days in Anzio) and came home to America numb. We don’t get De Niro the mythic executioner who vaulted over rooftops in The Godfather: Part II or embodied the dark soul of urban paranoia in Taxi Driver. Scorsese stages Sheeran’s kills as arrhythmic, ungainly — pop-pop-pop from behind, and that’s it. It is what it is. A job, like house painting.

The Irishman is, in fact, closely based on Charles Brandt’s I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa. It’s a sprawling, messy book that further dispels (for at least one reader) the fantasy that JFK was assassinated by a lone nut who was then spontaneously taken out by a grieving nightclub owner. (I mean, really, folks.) The paint is blood, the patois representative of how gangsters talk in Steven Zaillian’s slyly garrulous screenplay. Even the most bloodcurdling figures, like Tony Salerno (Domenick Lombardozzi), speak in euphemism and metaphor, not because they’re poets but because they’re disconnected from the horror they perpetrate. Pacino’s Hoffa earns the bosses’ wrath not only for taking control of the Teamsters’ pension fund but for being blunt, unmannerly — maybe even for caring too much. Hoffa’s passion is why he takes root in Sheeran’s mind.

The movie may be framed by Sheeran’s final days, but it’s largely a flashback with its own flashbacks. The main thread is a long but mundane 1975 road trip to a wedding with Sheeran at the wheel, his sometime boss and patron Russell Bufalino (Pesci) in the passenger seat, and the men’s wives in the back. The vibe is eerily flat. Why are we watching so uneventful a journey unless something terrible is coming? Along the way, Sheeran tells us how he first met Bufalino (cute, in a gas station), how he made his bones stealing sides of meat, and how he began to blow up cars and warehouses and finally people for the likes of Russ and Angelo Bruno (a brusque, chill Keitel) and Felix “Skinny Razor” DiTullio (Bobby Cannavale). Sheeran goes to work for Hoffa at Bufalino’s request, as an aide, a bodyguard, and a spy.

The union’s chief antagonist early on is President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Bobby, the attorney general, who launches a campaign against organized crime that organized criminals find inexplicable given their help in securing Kennedy the presidency. The scenes in which RFK grills Hoffa are rich in period detail, but the movie is not designed as a historical epic like The Aviator. It’s a film of faces. Odd faces, at times. Faces that — thanks to computer “de-aging” — don’t always match the voices and bodies. When Bufalino phones Hoffa to recommend “that kid I was talkin’ to you about,” it takes a moment to register that the kid is De Niro — this CG time machine can travel only so far back. But a case could be made that the partial “de-aging” gives the film its poignancy . These actors are ghosts of their former selves.

After years of doing anything and everything and not seeming fully invested, De Niro is once more driven to test himself. His Sheeran feels nothing specific yet is in evident pain, which sometimes manifests itself in a toothless grimace (he looks like Bela Lugosi) but more often translates into stammers that signal inner panic. He has no stature until he attains tragic stature, another in the long line of Judases and Brutuses in Scorsese’s films, men who betray their friends actively (by turning them in) or passively (by not warning them of danger). The turncoat in GoodFellas, Henry Hill, misses only the rush — the fun — of being a gangster, but for Sheeran it’s age and aloneness that turn his gaze to his past.

In any case, who can resist seeing De Niro across from Keitel and Pesci? Pacino has gotten most of the raves for The Irishman, but it’s Pesci who thrilled me to the core. A pop-top in Raging Bull and, especially, GoodFellas and Casino , he plays Bufalino as supernaturally watchful, hypersensitive to other peoples’ rhythms. Who could imagine Pesci triumphing as a man who looks for equilibrium, who seeks to modulate every encounter, who accepts murder as inevitable but, sadly, sees in it a sign of failure? I thank the gods of acting that he came out of retirement to do this.

As for Pacino, Scorsese nudges him out of his familiar rhythms, evidently refusing to let him do the kind of freestyle acting that he fancies is bebop but is more often ham. This is a “head” Pacino performance, not a cojones one. On the stump, this Hoffa’s shoulders go stiff, and he jerks in the manner of Richard Nixon — derivative but plausible, since Nixon’s manner might well have rubbed off on the real Hoffa. Zaillian’s firm dramatic beats keep Pacino in the moment, and it’s a joy to see him go eye to eye with the superb Stephen Graham as the febrile Anthony Provenzano (“Tony Pro”), each man staring daggers that seem an instant away from materializing. Most of all, Pacino lets you feel Hoffa’s relish for the job, which is partly legitimate, partly based on patronage and bribes and occasional rough stuff.

The Irishman doesn’t fully earn its epic running time, and a subplot featuring Sheeran’s attentive daughter, Peggy (Lucy Gallina as a girl, Anna Paquin grown up), isn’t woven gracefully into the narrative. She’s his conscience, and the device sticks out. But if the movie is overlong, it’s not overscaled. When Scorsese sets out to make an epic like The Aviator or Gangs of New York, he often loses the pulse or goes to too-flamboyant lengths to speed it up. His whoosh was sometimes a little suspect, much of it born of real filmmaking fervor but some of it spurious, suggesting a chef who snorts a line of coke and dances around a kitchen yelling, “Can I cook!” In Scorsese’s self-effacement here, there’s a suggestion that he regrets at least some of those pyrotechnics, that he knows he sacrificed depth for momentum. The slowing-down in The Irishman is radical, and it pays off in the long final section, in which the characters are too old to move as they once did. They can’t hide inside motion, so Scorsese won’t let himself, either. The upshot is his most satisfying film in decades.

*A version of this article appears in the October 28, 2019, issue of  New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!

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The Irishman Review

08 Nov 2019

The Irishman

If you know anything about The Irishman , you’ll know two things: CGI ageing technology has made Robert De Niro , Al Pacino and Joe Pesci look like young bucks, and it’s really long (three-and-a-half hours). Well, it’s the genius of Martin Scorsese ’s film, based on Charles Brandt’s book about Mob foot soldier Frank Sheeran I Heard You Paint Houses (a euphemism for splattering the walls with blood), that neither really come into play. For Scorsese, helped by terrific performances across the board, replaces curiosity about technical trickery (you get over it so quickly) with fascination with a man’s life. While it delivers all the Scorsese-ness you want (you’ll lose count of how many times someone gets shot in the face), this is Marty in mature mode, a compelling meditation on time, ageing, connections and guilt that reaches the parts other gangster films only dream of.

If you want to see how The Irishman departs from Goodfellas , it’s present and correct in the very first shot. If the latter once saw the camera snaking behind Henry Hill parading his new girl through the Copa, The Irishman opens with a slow deliberate move through a Catholic OAP home, past orderlies and wheel-chaired patients, to land on an ageing Frank Sheeran (De Niro) recounting his story to an off-screen interviewer (a nurse? A priest?). After the serious, spiritually minded Silence , the first hour is Scorsese having fun in the old neighbourhood. A World War II Vet stationed in Italy (this is how he learns to speak Italian and kill people comfortably), Frank meets Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci), the elegant, sinister boss of the Pennsylvania-based Bufalino crime family. The pair hit it off and what follows is vintage Marty. There are scams with steaks, characters talking to camera like a mobster Fleabag, colourful gangster nicknames (Whispers, Sally Bugs, Tony 3 Fingers, Pete The Greek), almost documentary like details into gangster M.O. (Sheeran points a spot in a river where hit men drop their weapons leaving “enough guns to arm a small country”) and oodles of dry, wise-guy wit. We also get glimpses of Sheeran’s homelife. When daughter Peggy (Lucy Gallina) tells him her employer shoved her, Sheeran marches around to the grocery store and gives him an almighty beating. It’s a character trait — a desire to protect his family but with no real idea how — that comes to reverberate in the third act.

De Niro is equally dialled down, a man at the centre of the action but always removed from it. It’s his best work in years.

Of course, part of the joy of all this is seeing De Niro and Pesci back on their bullshit. Pesci’s Bufalino is a fantastic creation, a polar opposite of the livewires he has previously played for Scorsese. He is a polite non-smoker (there is a running gag about women lighting up in his car) and on the surface likeable, but Pesci imbues him with a quiet, frightening quality. Pesci remains precise and measured. His scenes with De Niro crackle with chemistry but also go off into some unexpected places: a discussion about family — Peggy is terrified of Bufalino and it carries an interesting thread through the movie — at a bowling alley has a tenderness surprising giving the actors and milieu. De Niro is equally dialled down, a man at the centre of the action but always removed from it. It’s his best work in years.

As Frank gains Bufalino’s trust, he rises up the ranks and is given an important assignment: to babysit Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino), the volatile leader of the Mob-sponsored Teamsters union, the second-most powerful man in America and currently under investigation by big business and the government. The Irishman is the first time Scorsese and Pacino have worked together, and they couldn’t have found a better fit. A huge, colourful character, Hoffa lets Pacino organically let rip, the histrionic outbursts that have become part of his acting persona — whatever the role — feel right and just here. Best of all are his run-ins with Stephen Graham ’s New Jersey crime boss Tony Pro; one fist-fight which starts over wearing shorts to a meeting and what constitutes being late is one for the ages. There’s a fantastic moment where, on the day JFK is shot, Hoffa sees his union HQ has lowered the stars and stripes to half mast and forces them to raise it. But Hoffa never becomes a clown: he is cunning, a control freak (he doesn’t drink alcohol so his underlings inject booze into watermelon to get their fix) and intelligent, and Pacino plays it to the hilt.

It’s in this middle stretch where the film slightly loses its focus. In his ambition, Scorsese tries to broaden the story into a history lesson, intercutting newsreel footage of the Kennedy and Nixon years, but never really makes the connection between the underworld and politics substantial and satisfying (that feels like another film). The film also misses the spiky female presence of a Lorraine Bracco ( GoodFellas ) or Sharon Stone ( Casino ), but Anna Paquin , as a grown-up Peggy, gives it something else, adding another chill to the film’s cold heart with limited screen time.

The film is better when it sticks to the dynamics between the characters and it picks up superbly as the various conflicts come together. But what lifts The Irishman head and shoulders above every other recent crime film is that it doesn’t end when the bodies are buried and the gangsters are locked up. Instead it becomes a powerful, painful study of regret, but not remorse. “You don’t know how fast time goes by ’til you get there,” says Frank towards the end as the film becomes about counting the cost of a life of crime. Sheeran is emotionally unintelligent — a call to a widow trying to express his sympathy is excruciating for him and us — but there is little time in all the ‘painting houses’ to consider and reflect. Scorsese and writer Steve Zaillian give him that epiphany towards the end and its heartbreaking — a man who has killed so many people has also murdered his ability to feel. There is little in the gangster canon (perhaps the end of The Godfather Part II ) or Scorsese’s back-catalogue to match the surprise or emotional wallop of the ending. The result is a master working at the top of his game.

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• DVD & Streaming

The Irishman

Content caution.

In Theaters

• November 2, 2019
• Robert De Niro as Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran; Al Pacino as Jimmy Hoffa; Joe Pesci as Russell Bufalino; Ray Romano as Bill Bufalino; Bobby Cannavale as Felix "Skinny Razor" DiTullio; Anna Paquin as Peggy Sheeran; Stephen Graham as Anthony Provenzano; Stephanie Kurtzuba as Irene Sheeran; Jesse Plemons as Chuckie O'Brien; Harvey Keitel as Angelo Bruno; Kathrine Narducci as Carrie Bufalino; Domenick Lombardozzi as Anthony Salerno; Sebastian Maniscalco as Joseph "Crazy Joe" Gallo; Lucy Gallina as young Peggy Sheeran

Home Release Date

• November 27, 2019
• Martin Scorsese

Distributor

Movie review.

Some Mob bosses claim to know where all the bodies are buried. But Frank Sheeran put them there.

He euphemistically says that he’s a house painter. And, after a fashion, he is: He paints the walls red not with a brush, but with a bullet. Sure, maybe the coverage isn’t quite what an owner would want. But if Frank does his job well, the owner is probably in no position to care.

He wasn’t always a killer. For years he drove a truck, hauling sides of beef. He delivered meat instead of making it, and that was just fine.

But Frank never shied away from dirtier work. Back in World War II, his commanding officers sometimes had him run a couple of Nazi POWs out into the wood and “come back quickly.” They never told him what to do, but he knew. In those hard, war-torn days when bullets were plentiful and mercy scarce, the calculus made sense to Frank.

He didn’t love the killing. But he didn’t mind it, either. It was just a job, painting the European dirt. Good soldiers followed orders, and Frank was a good soldier.

Frank never even would’ve worked for the Mob had he not met a kindly little fellow at a gas station. Frank’s truck had broken down. The man suggested tightening the timing chain and, sure enough, the truck purred like a kitten again after that quick fix. Frank thanked him and went on his way.

But the man—Mafia don Russell Bufalino—didn’t forget Frank. When Frank got into a scrape over a bit of stolen beef, Russell’s brother Bill, a lawyer, defended him. And when Frank told Russell about his experiences in the war—his off-the-record “painting” duties—Russell figured he found a guy who’d fit right in with his extended family. After all, the Mob is always looking for good soldiers.

Frank’s lucrative second career was born. He didn’t need much direction—just a name and a wink. He’d do the job and get out, letting the cleanup crew follow. And he didn’t just paint: He was an all-around handyman, doing whatever needed to be done. Collect a debt? Rough up a welcher? Didn’t matter, Frank could, and would, do it. And as he worked, his reputation grew.

One night, Russell hands the phone to Frank and asks him to speak with Jimmy Hoffa, head of the Teamsters Union and one of the most powerful men in the United States.

“I heard you paint houses,” Hoffa says.

“I do my own carpentry, too,” Frank answers.

And with that, Frank starts working for the Teamsters as well—nothing too bloody, too extreme, but definitely off the books.

Yeah, Frank knows how to be a good soldier. He knows that if you follow orders, the rewards will come, and his whole life is proof.

But what happens when you work for two different bosses?

Frank knows where the bodies are buried. He put more than his share there. But as time goes on, he’ll have to be careful to make sure he doesn’t join them.

Positive Elements

Few characters in The Irishman could be described, by any sort of fair measuring stick, as being a “good person.” After all, we’re talking about folks who are either members of the Mafia or neck deep in their doings. But still, each character adheres in some way to a code of morality, albeit one of his own making. And sometimes, these characters have cogent things to say.

Take Russell, for instance, a seemingly gentle crime boss. Sure, his business can get violent, and he’s certainly not above erasing folks who cross him. But he sees himself as a wise, generous patriarch—a true Godfather to those under his “care”—and he takes his role as a protector quite seriously.

Moreover, he’s all about family. He tells Frank that family is a “blessing” and cautions the Irishman to never take his own family (his second wife and his four daughters) for granted. Russell thinks of Frank’s family as an extension of his own, and he and Frank have almost a father-son relationship. He protects Frank throughout the movie, sometimes from fellow mobsters that might have reason to want him dead.

“You don’t know what a good friend you have,” one boss tells Frank sincerely. And when Frank acknowledges Russell’s friendship, the mobster tells him, “No. You don’t know.” The kingpin is suggesting that, if it hadn’t been for Russell, Frank might be dead—and probably by this mobster’s orders.

But as much as Russell loves family, Jimmy Hoffa loves family, and we see that primarily through the eyes of Peggy, one of Frank’s daughters. Peggy, more than anyone, sees the dark side of her father and is repulsed by the Mob. When Russell comes to visit, no matter how many gifts he showers on her, she’s scared of the guy—just like she is of her own dad. In contrast, Jimmy becomes something of a favorite uncle to Peggy: His enthusiasm for life and seemingly genuine good will win her over. The two remain close even as Peggy grows up.

As for Frank … well, he wants to be a good dad, and he tries to be both a strong provider and protector. His Mob ties technically bolster both roles, even as it drives wedges between him and his daughters (especially Peggy). And as Frank’s life wears on, we realize that his failures as a father are his biggest regret. At least we can say that much about him: Toward the end, he understood this area of deep failure.

Spiritual Elements

Catholicism runs deep in the Mob (at least in Director Martin Scorsese’s version of the Mob). We see several baptisms at Catholic churches, along with a wedding or two. Christian statues and iconography have a persistent presence.

Near the end of his life, Russell begins going to church regularly. Frank almost openly scoffs at him at first, but Russell suggests that as you get older, your thoughts turn to the eternal. “Don’t laugh,” Russell says. “You’ll see.”

[ Spoiler Warning ] Indeed, Frank does. The film traces decades of Frank’s life, from the time he was a truck driver to when he’s an old man in a Catholic nursing home. At first, we see the attendant priest talk with others. But later, the priest takes Frank’s confession and prays with him repeatedly. When the priest asks Frank if he feels any remorse at all for his past deeds, Frank says he’s tried—that even confessing those sins was an effort to feel some remorse. But Frank admits that the people he killed were “water under a bridge.” “I think we can be sorry even when we don’t feel sorry,” the priest tells him, hopefully. “It’s a decision of the will.”

When Frank shops for his final resting place, he chooses an above-ground crypt, because it feels less “final” than being cremated or buried under ground. We hear people talk derogatorily about Jewish-run businesses. Russell tells Peggy a joke about why God made heaven so high.

Sexual Content

We hear someone reference lesbians. Frank takes part in a complicated scheme that involves talking with “a fairy named Fairy.” (The man appears to have some makeup on his face.) Frank has an affair with a waitress. We see them walk toward a hotel, laughing and talking, shortly before we’re told that Frank left his first wife. (He then marries the waitress.) We hear about a casino offering the “first topless show” on the strip.

Violent Content

We see Frank “paint” repeatedly. Sometimes the kills are quick—just a gunshot or two—and the blood spatters across the walls. But in one, he shoots a man several times as the guy tries to flee, eventually pouring bullets into the victim’s head as he lies on the sidewalk. (We see a close-up of another victim’s face, two bullet holes grotesquely marring the man’s visage.)

In flashback, we watch as Frank commits a war crime: He forces two Nazis to dig their own grave, then shoots both several times in the chest. They slump into the hole, and Frank shoots them both again a few times, making sure the deed is done.

Frank’s not the only guy to kill here, though. One man is strangled in a car, for instance. The leader of an Italian-American advocacy group is brutally assassinated: Someone shoots him in the head, and blood spurts from the wound as police wrestle the assassin to the ground. And throughout the movie, Scorsese freezes the picture periodically, giving us captions of various gangsters and telling us how they met their demise: One was shot in the head six times, we’re told; another three. Another passed away from cancer, etc.

People have some nonlethal confrontations, too: Jimmy Hoffa fights repeatedly with a prime union adversary. Both kick and throw punches and wrestle each other to the ground. (Hoffa wears some cuts and bruises on his face from one such melee.) When a store owner pushes Peggy, Frank storms into the store, beats the owner, throws him through his own door (shattering the glass covering it) and stomps on the man’s bloody hand, presumably grinding a bunch of bones into mush.

A chicken’s neck is sliced open, sending blood flying. Cars and boats get blown up to send a message. (A bunch of taxis are dumped in the water for the same reason.) We see a charred body partially incinerated in a crematorium. We hear Walter Cronkite talk about the assassination of President John Kennedy, and we get news reports on the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. The movie suggests that the Mob had involvement in both events. One character threatens to rip the guts out of someone’s granddaughter.

Crude or Profane Language

About 130 f-words (including at least one preceded by “mother”) and more than 20 s-words. Jimmy Hoffa’s favorite expletive is “c–ks–ker, which he repeats many times. Also overheard: “a–,” “b–ch,” “b–tard,” “h—,” “p-ss” and “pr–k.” God’s name is misused at least seven times, five with “d–n.” The characters sometimes slip into un-subtitled Italian, so there might be a few that this non-Italian-speaking movie reviewer missed as well.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Characters smoke a lot. Indeed, much of the narrative revolves around a road trip that Frank and Russell are making with their wives, and smoke breaks are a big topic of conversation.

Characters drink frequently too, and some seem to consume to excess. Lots of scenes take place in bars and nightclubs.

Other Negative Elements

We are talking about the Mob here. Most everyone is involved in organized crime in one way or another, so the ethical slopes the story traipses across here are slippery indeed. People (including politicians) are bribed, jurors are tampered with. In addition, we hear a great deal about ethnicity, with some embracing unflattering and offensive ethnic stereotypes. Mob-owned (or financed) Vegas casinos become part of a subplot.

At first, director Martin Scorsese’s Netflix-based The Irishman feels a little like a particularly bloody version of Forrest Gump : Frank Sheeran, we’re told, was elbow deep in American history circa the 1960s and ’70s, and those arms were coated in crimson. From Kennedy’s assassination to Hoffa’s disappearance, he can tell you what went down.

But if the real Frank Sheeran was still alive (he died in 2003), he just might say that the nearly four-hour flick is close to a documentary.

Charles Brandt’s book, I Heard You Paint Houses , was the product of a series of deathbed confessions made by Sheeran—many of which have extensive outside corroboration. Scorsese took the book—the cover of which is, suggestively, red—and slapped much of it on screen, pushing a few of his favorite actors into the major parts. Oscar-winners Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci cemented themselves as acting legends under Scorsese’s direction; they, in turn, helped make Scorsese one of Hollywood’s most iconic directors. Pacino, another Oscar winner, had never worked with Scorsese before. He took the role of Jimmy Hoffa in part so he’d have the chance to do so.

The results could push The Irishman to awards-season glory, perhaps even nabbing a Best Picture Oscar that Netflix clearly covets. And like much of Scorsese’s work, The Irishman weaves deeper, sometimes even spiritual messages into the mix. The Irishman deals deeply with sin and confession, family and betrayal.

But while Scorsese’s moviemaking mastery is certainly on display, so are two of his more unfortunate calling cards: blood and bad language.

Some could make an argument that neither are out of place here, given the hard, violent world of organized crime that Scorsese depicts. Purported to chronicle the real mob life of a real-life mobster, all that crass content arguably adds to the realism.

But Plugged In can’t and won’t make that argument. This content doesn’t add much to the story, and it certainly makes it more difficult—and less advisable—to watch. And the fact that this harsh piece of cinema comes without so much as a ticket-checker to guard kids against extreme R-rated content is deeply troubling. Sure, Netflix does have parental controls, but few parents use them or, perhaps, even know how.

So thanks to the on-demand streaming megalith, The Irishman can charge into your home unchecked¬—like a heat-packing hitman rushing into a New York restaurant.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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The irishman, common sense media reviewers.

Scorsese's reflective, masterful, violent crime epic.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Movie asks deep questions about the measure of a p

The characters here are mainly criminals, and even

Extremely graphic, bloody killings. Guns and shoot

Flirting. Spoken reference to a "topless joint." S

Very strong, frequent language, with uses of "f--k

Era-establishing brands/logos include Stuckey's, T

Frequent cigarette/cigar smoking. Frequent social

Parents need to know that The Irishman is an epic crime drama from director Martin Scorsese. Violence is extremely strong, with many killings, blood spurts, guns, and shooting. There's strangling, fighting, punching, yelling, explosions, and a chicken's neck being sliced. Language is also constant, with…

Positive Messages

Movie asks deep questions about the measure of a person's life, about regret, about legacy. Most characters who are involved in shady dealings meet with strong consequences.

Positive Role Models

The characters here are mainly criminals, and even if some of them might have accomplished some measure of good along the way, they shouldn't be considered role models.

Violence & Scariness

Extremely graphic, bloody killings. Guns and shooting. Blood spurts. A character slices a chicken's throat, spattering his face with blood. Blood-covered shirt. Strangling. Body going through tree shredder. Punching, hitting, fighting. Kicking character's face, stomping on character's hand. Exploding cars. Screaming/yelling. War footage on television. Body being incinerated.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Flirting. Spoken reference to a "topless joint." Shirtless men in steam room.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Very strong, frequent language, with uses of "f--k," "motherf----r," "s--t," "bulls--t," "c--ksucker," "son of a bitch," "ass," "damn," etc.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Era-establishing brands/logos include Stuckey's, Texaco, Pepsi, etc.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Frequent cigarette/cigar smoking. Frequent social drinking. Drinking shots in bar. Character soaks a watermelon with vodka, gets a little tipsy eating watermelon.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Irishman is an epic crime drama from director Martin Scorsese . Violence is extremely strong, with many killings, blood spurts, guns, and shooting. There's strangling, fighting, punching, yelling, explosions, and a chicken's neck being sliced. Language is also constant, with countless uses of "f--k," "s--t," "motherf----r," "c--ksucker," "bulls--t," and many more. Characters smoke cigarettes and cigars throughout, and drinking is common, though mostly in a social way. (One character does get a bit tipsy on vodka-soaked watermelon.) Sex isn't really an issue, except for a scene of flirting and mention of a "topless joint." It's a long (3 1/2 hours!) but masterful movie that recalls Scorsese's earlier classics like GoodFellas but is more reflective and melancholy. It's highly recommended for mature viewers. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 21 parent reviews

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I want my account control please help me I m big time gave you

If you have 3.5 hours to kill then go for it

What's the story.

In THE IRISHMAN, Frank Sheeran ( Robert De Niro ) tells the story of his life and how he came to be associated with Jimmy Hoffa ( Al Pacino ). Frank starts out as a union driver, transporting meat in refrigerated trucks, but soon realizes he can make extra money on the side delivering to local gangsters. He meets crime boss Russell Bufalino ( Joe Pesci ) and becomes a hit man. After the union helps Frank avoid a criminal charge, he's introduced to Hoffa, and the two become close friends. Frank rises through the ranks, becoming president of his own chapter. But things start to crumble when Hoffa goes to jail and later tries to regain control of the unions. It becomes clear that his time has come, and it's Frank's job to take care of it.

Is It Any Good?

A magisterial entry in his long and masterful career, Martin Scorsese 's crime epic is no mere nostalgia trip; reflective and melancholy rather than kinetic, it's touched by both greatness and loss. The Irishman assembles actors who appeared in Scorsese's classics Mean Streets , Taxi Driver , Raging Bull , GoodFellas , and Casino (plus Pacino, who's working with Scorsese for the first time -- and delivers a sucker-punch, scene-stealing performance as Hoffa). While Scorsese's gritty, energetic, often intoxicating filmmaking punctuated those earlier films, The Irishman is more carefully observed, more bittersweet. It actually has more in common with Scorsese's faith-based trilogy, The Last Temptation of Christ , Kundun , and Silence .

In telling Frank Sheeran's long life story, the movie creates a tragic, passive character who comes close to greatness without ever achieving it and whose penchant for following orders and remaining loyal allows him to overlook any moral quandaries. Even the scenes of violence and suspense are deliberately dispassionate, as if to confess that these things should not be spectacles. Yet it's an exquisite-looking movie, with nary an unnecessary move. And it's even surprisingly, frequently touching and funny. In the end, The Irishman leaves off with many questions -- about legacy, regret, and more. It's a great movie from a director in his autumn years who's looking back more than forward but is still in awe of the mysteries of life.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about The Irishman 's violence . Are the many killings meant to be exciting or shocking? What's the impact of media violence on kids?

How are drinking and smoking depicted? Are they glamorized? Why was smoking more accepted during the time this movie takes place?

How familiar were you with Jimmy Hoffa? Why does it matter to Frank that people remember his legacy?

Did Frank seem to have any regrets at the end of his life? Did he have any remorse for all the things he had done? Do you have regrets or remorse for anything in life?

What makes stories about gangsters and criminals interesting? Does this movie glamorize these men and their lives? How does it compare to Scorsese's other films in that regard?

Movie Details

• In theaters : November 1, 2019
• On DVD or streaming : November 24, 2020
• Cast : Robert De Niro , Joe Pesci , Al Pacino
• Director : Martin Scorsese
• Studio : Netflix
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 209 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : pervasive language and strong violence
• Last updated : February 18, 2023

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Mother of the Bride (2024) Review: Comedic Talent Wasted in Mediocre Rom-Com

Mother of the Bride  unwittingly tells you everything you need to know about it right at the opening logos: the expected Netflix logo and one for the Motion Picture Corporation of America, a company I’ve never heard of that apparently specializes in low-budget comedies, such as Dumb and Dumber , the  A Christmas Prince  and  The Princess Switch franchises, and  Irish Wish  earlier this year.

Even without knowing their filmography, I would still say this logo tells you everything about the film before it starts because “Motion Picture Corporation of America” sounds like the most generic name for a movie studio ever and  Mother of the Bride is unfortunately about as generic a romantic comedy as you can get, aside from a handful of key details that honestly make it worse.

Also Read:  Irish Wish  Review – No Magic In Lindsay Lohan Netflix Rom-Com

Mother of the bride  plot.

Our story centers on Dr. Lana Winslow, a geneticist played by Brooke Shields , who receives an unexpected visit from her daughter Emma, a career Instagram influencer played by Miranda Cosgrove , with massive news. She’s getting married in Thailand in one month.

Despite the abruptness of the news, Lana is happy for her daughter and all seems well when they arrive in Thailand. Until Lana discovers that her daughter is marrying the son of her college ex-boyfriend played by Benjamin Bratt . Will the two of them be able to keep it together for the sake of their kids’ wedding? And, in the midst of her daughter experiencing true love, will Lana find love of her own?

Mother of the Bride  Critique

To give credit where it’s due,  Mother of the Bride  is completely honest about exactly what it is. A trope-filled, comfort food romantic comedy in the same vein as the Hallmark Christmas movies, but presumably for Mother’s Day instead given the release window and subject matter.

Almost every classic romantic trope is here: partially heard conversations, working too much and eventually getting back at the boss, the sassy best friend, the gay couple that’s supposed to make up for the fact that the straight to queer romantic comedy ratio is about 37,000 to 1 if we’re being generous. Think of a trope,  Mother of the Bride  most likely has it.

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And there’s nothing wrong with that sort of “turn your brain off” rom-com in theory. The Hallmark Christmas movies didn’t become as popular as they are out of nowhere and personally, I rather enjoyed  Friends and Family Christmas  this past holiday season despite it doing many of the same things as  Mother of the Bride. 

If you just want to see attractive-looking people in a familiar story in the gorgeously shot country of Thailand, this film certainly provides on that end. Plus, the cast all does a very solid job with the material they’re given.But that material is where the problem comes in.

The best versions of these kinds of rom-coms make up for the trope-driven storytelling with memorable comedic set-pieces. For example, the aforementioned Friends and Family Christmas features a scene where our romantic leads have to stuff a giant teddy bear into a cab and then carry it up a flight of stairs. It’s funny, it’s unique, and I still remember it almost six months after the only time I watched the movie.

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Mother of the Bride doesn’t have anything like that. Every comedic bit feels like something you’ve seen a million times before in other, better movies. Guys getting hit in the groin, people falling into water, that sort of thing. None of the extremely talented comedians really get a chance to be funny here. It’s especially disappointing to see how wasted Miranda Cosgrove is as Emma given both her talent and the genuine potential with her character’s story as an influencer struggling with work-life balance.

But all of this might still be largely forgivable if it weren’t for one massive overarching issue. The main romantic relationship between Lana and her ex, Will. Given that Lana is the mother of the bride and Will is the father of the groom, this relationship is awkward at best and the movie never acknowledges this.

There’s one throwaway joke at the beginning about Emma canceling the wedding if she finds out her and her fiance are half-siblings, but at no other point does the film acknowledge how weird and gross it is for Lana and Will to have a romantic relationship when their children are getting married.

This becomes especially frustrating when the movie pulls the “Main female lead starts falling for a different hunk whose honestly way better but doesn’t really love her the way the main male lead does” trope and you can’t help but find yourself screaming “Well at least it wouldn’t be incest if she got with the other guy!” at the screen. The whole thing casts an awkward and uncomfortable shadow that ultimately makes whatever merit the rest of the movie had into a moot point.

In Conclusion

Mother of the Bride is nowhere close to one of the worst films I’ve ever seen, nor is it the worst film I’ve seen this year or even the worst Netflix film I’ve seen this year. After all, I’d still rather watch this than sit through Rebel Moon: Part Two again. But it is definitely disappointing. This cast is talented, the cinematography is gorgeous, there’s some interesting ideas at play with the characters and the initial set-up, incestuous undertones aside, is not a bad one.

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This could’ve been great. Or at the very least, a fun guilty pleasure watch. But instead it’s either boring or deeply uncomfortable. A potentially compelling concept squandered and doomed to be just another Netflix thumbnail that gets passed over while mindlessly scrolling the homepage. Hopefully, the talented duo of Brooke Shields and Miranda Cosgrove can be in a better movie next time.

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Does ‘Bodkin’ Love True-Crime Podcasts or Want to Make Fun of Them?

By Alan Sepinwall

Alan Sepinwall

In Netflix ‘s new series Bodkin , hard-bitten newspaper reporter Dove (Siobhán Cullen) is forced to team up with veteran podcaster Gilbert ( Will Forte ) to investigate a 25-year-old mystery in the eponymous Irish town. The reluctant partners clash on everything, not least of which is that Dove thinks they can, and should, find out what really happened in Bodkin back in the day.

“Have you ever listened to a podcast where they actually solve it?” Gilbert asks, incredulous. “I need diversions. Red herrings. Human interest. The stuff that people actually care about .”

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I spent most of the seven episodes of Bodkin wondering whether Scharf thought Gilbert was good at his job or a buffoon who deserved the contempt of the cynical Dove. Much of the evidence pointed to the latter theory. He’s played by Forte, whose specialty is playing overconfident clowns, and whose performance at times seems to point in a MacGruber direction. Gilbert’s podcast narration, which bookends each episode of the TV show, is melodramatic and riddled with clichés, like the time he explains, “The problem with questions is the answers. Sometimes, the more you learn, the less you know.”

On the other hand, Forte gets to dial back the silliest aspects of his performance over time, as we discover that Gilbert’s real life is a lot more fragile and complicated than the persona he projects when he’s in front of a microphone. And the other characters at times speak just like him — “There are some questions that aren’t made to be answered,” one suspect tells law enforcement in a later episode — in a way suggesting that creator Jez Scharf and company(*) think this is perfectly fine dialogue.

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But the show understandably has to keep returning to the mystery, which feels overly complicated even for seven hours of television. Perhaps this is itself a tribute to the kind of true-crime podcast Gilbert has come to specialize in, where those red herrings have to do a lot of the work. If so, it would at least solve the mystery of whether Bodkin has affection for podcasting, or is gently mocking the form. 

All seven episodes of Bodkin are now streaming on Netflix. I’ve seen the whole season.

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‘Bodkin’ Review: A Darkly Comic Take On Our True-Crime Obsession

These days having a true-crime podcast is the best career move you can make. If it’s popular, there’s a streaming series in your future. And even if it isn’t, it’s carte blanche to call yourself a detective and turn up in quaint Irish towns solving local mysteries. Bodkin , a satirical seven-part send-up of the idea of amateur sleuths unpacking grisly secrets, should feel like a joke. But it’s better and smarter than that.

Riding a cultural wave of do-it-yourself crimefighting, Jez Scharf’s Irish Netflix series is as much a fish-out-of-water comedy as a legitimate crime drama, and as much a bitingly topical modern take on an age-old format as it is Father Ted with murders. It works on just about every level it operates on.

Will Forte plays Gilbert Power, an American podcaster trying to unearth his Irish roots in the fictional West Cork coastal town of Bodkin, but his familiar character is more of an excuse to examine the eccentric locals. Years earlier, three youngsters disappeared, and Power, along with peppy researcher Emmy (Robyn Cara) and disgraced investigative reporter Dove (Siobhán Cullen), want to find out why.

Easier said than done, though. The mystery goes right to the top, if you read “top” as a local bigwig named Seamus (David Wilmot) who might be a former terrorist gunrunner, and involves most of the eccentric locals, who all veer towards offensively folksy stereotypes but end up becoming something a little more with time.

And nobody wants these three stooges poking their noses into Bodkin’s business. Things get real. Other things get weird. But it quickly becomes apparent that there’s much more to Bodkin and its inhabitants than meets the eye.

Bodkin is the first foray into scripted television for the Obamas’ Higher Ground , giving it more of a pedigree than Netflix’s other forays into rural Ireland, like Irish Wish with Lindsay Lohan. But don’t think it’s a prestige show either – the animated opening credits feature a nun and a pint of Guinness.

But the production company had to be attracted to the project for a reason, and it becomes clear quite quickly what that reason is. Bodkin is really good. It’s smart and funny and legitimately compelling. It’s also very difficult to stop watching. In an age where most new shows are released in full, almost like a challenge, this is a bona fide binge-watch that you’ll snaffle down in a trance, lulled by its madcap sensibilities, allusions to folk horror, and laugh-out-loud humor.

But it’s a character study at heart. Forte’s Power is a legend in the podcasting community – Emmy idolizes him – but he’s still coasting on the success of one hit from years prior, which was only a professional success and not a personal one given the impact on his marriage. Power needs the Bodkin case to yield results so he can clear the debts he accumulated trying to make lightning strike twice.

Dove, meanwhile, is a proper investigative journalist who thinks true-crime podcasting is “necrophilia”, and has been sent by her London-based editor at The Guardian to help Power and get out of the limelight. Her previous case involving a government whistleblower ended in calamity and a potential breach of the Official Secrets Act, so she’d rather be anywhere else other than the madcap town of Bodkin.

All of this comes together into a legitimately great little series. Chances are nobody will watch it, but among the Netflix thumbnails you never quite know, and it’d be a lovely thing if Bodkin became the proper streaming hit it deserves to be.

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Article by Jonathon Wilson

Jonathon is one of the co-founders of Ready Steady Cut and has been an instrumental part of the team since its inception in 2017. Jonathon has remained involved in all aspects of the site’s operation, mainly dedicated to its content output, remaining one of its primary Entertainment writers while also functioning as our dedicated Commissioning Editor, publishing over 6,500 articles.

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When fate brings Belfast teacher JJ into the orbit of self-confessed 'low life scum' Naoise and Liam Og, the needle drops on a hip hop act like no other. Rapping in their native Irish, they ... Read all When fate brings Belfast teacher JJ into the orbit of self-confessed 'low life scum' Naoise and Liam Og, the needle drops on a hip hop act like no other. Rapping in their native Irish, they lead a movement to save their mother tongue. When fate brings Belfast teacher JJ into the orbit of self-confessed 'low life scum' Naoise and Liam Og, the needle drops on a hip hop act like no other. Rapping in their native Irish, they lead a movement to save their mother tongue.

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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes: Director Wes Ball on despotic leaders, the war on truth and ‘the soup we’re all swimming in’

Drawn from a 1963 novel by pierre boulle, the planet of the apes franchise has forever worked with two interwoven metaphors.

If Ball and the team have their way the Apes legend will extend deep into the current century. Photograph: Jasin Boland/20th Century Studios

In a fine 2013 episode of Mad Men, Don Draper, priapic advertising renegade, is minding his son Bobby while the rest of the family attend a vigil for the recently slain Martin Luther King. What else would the pair do in April of 1968 but go and see Planet of the Apes? Don and Bobby, hard though this may be to credit 56 years later, have no idea that that Charlton Heston has crash-landed on Earth of the distant future. They watch gape-mouthed as, in the final moments, he encounters a crumbled Statue of Liberty on the lapping shore. “You want to see it again?” Don asks. “Can we?” Bobby replies in assent.

The folk behind Mad Men knew how to wield their pop-cultural references. Not everyone got it at the time, but Franklin J Schaffner’s film, soon to spawn an entertainment empire, was loaded with sociopolitical allegory. The ruling apes treat the humans as simple-minded creatures, capable of taking on only rudimentary tasks. One hardly dares suggest how that scenario might relate to the United States’ most shameful original sin, but the subtexts are there for the viewer to disentangle.

The Apes have, through the intervening decades, had at least one enormous hiatus, but they have always come back to press home the ingenuity of the high concept. Four sequels of gradually diminishing quality emerged in the early 1970s. I first encountered the franchise in the short-lived TV series from 1974. There was a pretty good Marvel comic book. Then little for a quarter of a century. Tim Burton’s reboot film from 2001 was a modest hit, but it is not remembered with enormous affection. In contrast, the triptych of films that began with Rise of the Planet of the Apes in 2011 – a radically reworked origin myth – garnered stronger reviews than any Ape project since Don and Bobby got their first glimpse of gorillas on horseback.

Noa, Nova and Raka in 20th Century Studios' Kingdom of the Plent of the Apes. Photograph: 20th Century Studios

Now, six years after War for the Planet of the Apes closed off that “Caesar trilogy”, Wes Ball, director of the Maze Runner films, brings us the engaging Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Set a full 300 years later, the film posits that the humans have again reverted to a primal state. While the apes enjoy rudimentary civilisation, we are grunting in the bushes. (Or are we?)

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This is a good time to chew over what this franchise means and why it has refused to die. Bell, an amiable Floridian in his mid-40s, connects with the Draper family experience.

“Mine was the 1968 version of the movie,” he says of his earliest awareness of the series. “I was born in 1980, so I don’t even know when it was I saw it. My dad was probably watching it on TV or something. I’m sure the ideas of it were way over my head. But I do have distinct memories of that horse on the beach – and the Statue of Liberty. So that’s been imprinted on my brain forever.”

Last scene of Planet of the Apes made in 1968

It certainly has. About half way through Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, apes on horseback advance through the surf towards another wrecked reminder of human civilisation.

“We are both a sequel and a prequel in a weird way,” Ball says. “We have this unique opportunity to step away from the Caesar trilogy and use it as setup for a new chapter of stories and movies that could start heading towards that 1968 version.”

It seems unlikely the Apes franchise will ever again experience such an eerie mesh between content and surrounding political ambience as they did in 1968. There was never a better time to produce a skewed take on the United States that cast orangutans as the intellectuals and gorillas as the military class. Robert F Kennedy was murdered just two months after Martin Luther King. It was the year of the Tet offensive in Vietnam. The 1968 Democratic National Convention, in Chicago, was soaked in tear gas as police moved in on anti-war protesters. Two years later, in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, we find telepathic humans worshiping an atomic bomb in the ruins of St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.

Proximus Caesar played by Kevin Durand in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Photograph: 20th Century Studios.

Yet Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes will certainly set some cultural antennae tingling. The amiable chimpanzee hero finds himself captured by a despotic gorilla who, to spur on his army of slaves, delivers endless semi-lucid tirades from a raised podium. Reference is surely being made here to the rise of the “strong leader”. There may even be specific reference to a current presidential candidate in Ball’s own country.

“I agree with you that these movies – and good sci-fi in general – does hold up a mirror to the times in which they were made,” he says. “There is an element where you reflect on this stuff, even though it’s in this fantastical setup. It was not intentionally an allegory for today. These characters maybe show some similarities to other things that we’re going through. But they have existed for thousands of years. It’s more of a cautionary tale of figures that are charismatic and who can bend truth. I’m not saying, ‘This is Donald Trump.’ But it’s the soup we’re all swimming in.”

Raka played by Peter Macon in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Photograph: 20th Century Studios.

It is, perhaps, as well they didn’t make the despot an orangutan. What with those beasts being orange and all. If you know what I mean.

“We did talk about it,” Bell says, amused. “We just said, ‘We’ll save that for future movies!’”

Drawn from a 1963 novel by Pierre Boulle, who also wrote the source book for Bridge on the River Kwai, the Planet of the Apes franchise has forever worked with two interwoven metaphors. There is something here about race. Closer to the surface, the stories are also concerned with our relationship to other species. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is particularly good on the barriers we construct to shut off empathy between ourselves and our closest relatives in the animal kingdom.

'Even though they’re apes, it’s very much a human story,' says Wes Ball. Photograph: 20th Century Studios

“Because they’re apes acting like humans, you’re able to look at yourself, in an interesting way – with some distance,” Ball says. “It is about how we coexist with others. Even though they’re apes, it’s very much a human story.”

It has been reported that the producers of the 1968 film didn’t see the racial overtones until Sammy Davis jnr pointed them out. “He embraced each of them and congratulated them on what he declared was the most profound film Hollywood had ever made about racism in America,” Matthew Hays wrote in an article for Literary Hub last year. “The producers all looked at each other, dumbfounded. They had no idea what he was talking about.”

Those connections now seem obvious.

“We try never to be preachy about it,” Ball says. “But obviously that’s an element of these stories from the start. Like you said, racism was a key idea for the 1968 version. In our case it’s more about this war on truth in the world we live in. We talked early on about this idea that knowledge is power. Knowledge can be like a virus that you catch and that you spread. That was one of the Post-it notes we put on the wall.”

If Ball and the team have their way the Apes legend will extend deep into the current century. The new film, a nifty quest flick that owes something to The Searchers, ends with gestures towards future sequels. Yet so much has changed. Twentieth Century Fox, which controlled the whole package from 1968, has now lost the “Fox” in its title and become part of the wider Disney empire. The Apes are on the same team as Marvel, Avatar and Star Wars. Strange times.

Our heroes find themselves enslaved and working on a grand project for a despotic enemy. They plot sabotage. Photograph: 20th Century Studios.

“Disney was involved, but my real bosses were my old friends from Fox,” Ball says. “Disney had their thoughts on things, but not in any kind of overbearing way. They know this isn’t a Disney movie. It’s a 20th Century movie.”

One last nerdy question about the Apes heritage. Is it a gag that the new film’s second half looks to be occupying a similar place to the other Pierre Boulle story. Our heroes find themselves enslaved and working on a grand project for a despotic enemy. They plot sabotage. It’s Boulle’s Bridge on the River Kwai. Right?

Ball perks up.

“I never thought that,” he says. “But it wasn’t a conscious thing. I can see what you mean.”

No one has mentioned that?

“No. But go for it. Use it!”

It all ties together.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is in cinemas from Friday, May 9th

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Billy Connolly: Big Banana Feet review – proto-punk star comic at his 70s peak

Restored 1976 doc of Connolly’s tour of Ireland shows that, despite his bombastic stage presence, he is impeccably polite. But his naughtier material hasn’t aged well

H ere is a 70s time capsule as pungent as a brimming pub ashtray. Restored and rereleased, Big Banana Feet is the 1976 documentary about Billy Connolly’s live shows in Dublin and Belfast the year before, just after his appearance on the BBC’s Parkinson show made him a star virtually overnight, and allowed his legions of new fans to hear him live and unexpurgated.

Billy and his hangdog entourage – all looking like a very downbeat version of the Bay City Rollers – travel to Dublin then to Belfast by private plane, but aside from that, everything looks very non-luxury. The backstage areas have the air of a scout hut, and there don’t seem to be any riders with Jack Daniel’s, cocaine, only-green-coloured M&Ms, and the like – Connolly gets a pot of tea backstage so stewed it has to be poured like treacle.

The press gets an enormous amount of almost unmediated access to him, including a meet and greet before the show – despite his plaintive requests that this shouldn’t happen – and afterwards too. And the morning after his first big night at Dublin, he is prevailed upon to get up early for a radio show; he does it all with absolute politeness. The nearest Connolly gets to being annoyed in the entire film is when he realises his support act is playing a banjo, thus rather upstaging the bluegrass part of his own set.

Frankly, a lot of Connolly’s naughty material hasn’t aged very well and he got away with quite a lot of dross, perhaps because adult comedy was not a saturated mainstream market in those days. People were more used to the daring satire of Dave Allen, and in comparison Connolly was an innovator. Connolly certainly was proto-alternative and proto-punk, and these were febrile times. At the Dublin show, a heckler shouts “IRA!” and Connolly replies acidly: “I’d love to hear you say that at Ibrox [Rangers’ stadium in Glasgow] …!” It’s amazing, from this modern perspective, to experience again how sectarianism was a violent and normalised fact of life in the 70s.

In Belfast, Connolly prudently drops any material about the Troubles, perhaps because he simply and understandably doesn’t want to take the risk. When he arrives at Belfast airport, Connolly chats amiably to soldiers from 15th Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, which he was once with as a Terrritorial Army reserve, and we hear his melancholy song about this on stage, Weekend Soldier‚ easily the best part of his show.

It is what Connolly says offstage that is now amusing, rather than his actual act. When he and his crew are at the airport, a voice over the tannoy requests a “Mr Jamaica”; Connolly ponders that it feels like a Mr Universe candidate is being paged. “And then a white skinny guy gets up!” He also explains how someone made his famous banana boots and this man said to him: “They’re not identical … but then bananas never are.” For a second, Connolly’s material sounds like Alan Bennett’s.

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