The chatter around The Irishman has mostly involved Martin Scorsese shit-talking Marvel and/or how Netflix stepped up to fund a three-and-a-half-hour epic after traditional Hollywood studios told Marty to fuck off. None of that is as interesting as The Irishman itself.
A reality-inspired crime epic that spans decades, The Irishmanâs heart is Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), who âpaints housesâ for big-shot gangsters; his paint, it should be noted, only comes in blood red. Sheeranâs main employer/benefactor/BFF is the intense, sharp-eyed Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci), though once Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) enters the picture, Frank is torn between the sometimes clashing demands of two hard-willed, charismatic men.
De Niro is great (and, thankfully, the distracting, de-aging CGI fades into the background after a while), but this is Pesci and Pacinoâs movie: With mania and fury, Pacino rips every scene apart, while Pesci takes a different approach, subtly and slowly building an aging crime boss whoâs both heart-achingly soulful and blood-chillingly brutal.
Seeing Scorsese masterfully track all this harks back to Goodfellas and Casino, but the jarring, moving The Irishman is, remarkably, better than both. While the intense focus on Frank & Pals comes at the expense of other characters, like every single woman (Anna Paquin plays the most prominent one, with maybe three lines of dialogue), the end result is still stunning: A saga thatâs horrifying and funny and melancholy, sometimes in different scenes, sometimes all at once.
Find theaters and showtimes for The Irishman here. See all of our movie times here. The Irishman starts streaming on Netflix Wednesday, November 27.
