El irlandés

The Irishman is a companion piece to Martin Scorsese's other gangster films, Goodfellas and Casino.

It is also a teaming up of his old pals for one last ride. Robert De Niro has not appeared in a Scorsese film since Casino. Neither has Joe Pesci who basically retired from the movies in 1998. Harvey Keitel last worked with Scorsese in The Last Temptation of Christ. Al Pacino is the new boy, his first time working with Scorsese.

The Irishman is less violent than Goodfellas and Casino. It still packs a punch although Scorsese has been more careful not to make these gangsters look as glamorous as in his previous films.

Spanning 40 years, Frank Sheeran (De Niro) recalls his story. A World War 2 veteran who fought in Italy, a truck driver who delivered meat who went on to become a man who painted houses (a hitman.) Sheeran got involved with Russell Bufalino (Pesci) a Pennsylvania gangster who kept a low profile. It brings him into contact with Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino) the leader of the powerful Teamster union who loaned money from its pension fund to organized crime. Sheeran went on to become close with Hoffa and a union organiser.

Scorsese has called The Irishman a chamber piece. It is mainly about its three main characters and only De Niro, Pesci and Pacino go through the digital de-aging process. They are made to look in their late 30s/40s for the early part of the film.

The film has the best cinema performances that De Niro and Pacino have given in years, mainly because the quality of some scripts they have been offered have been far from the best. Pacino plays Hoffa differently from Jack Nicholson in the movie Hoffa. Pacino's interpretation is of a man who likes ice cream sundaes, hates tardiness and unwilling to see reason because he thought the Teamsters owed him the leadership as a right. Pesci in contrast with his volatile Goodfellas character is a more thoughtful wiseguy here.

The film clocks in at three and half hours. It is too long and one hour could had easily been excised from it. The de-aging has been done sympathetically. It works mainly because we are never told how old they were when we see them at their younger age. However, you can make an actor in his 70s look thirty years younger, you cannot digitally make them move like younger men. You can spot De Niro gingerly climbing some rocks in one scene.

The treatment of females in this movie is superficial. Sheeran's and Bufalino's wives are just there to chain smoke. Only Sheeran's daughter Peggy shows unhappiness as to her father's chosen profession. Even then the old Peggy is wasted. At one point I did wonder why the film had a de-aged Holly Hunter playing Peggy. Only to realise she was played by Anna Paquin, who won an Oscar for playing Hunter's daughter in The Piano.

Despite the reservations, Scorsese has crafted a wonderful film, getting together the actors he relied on from his own early days as a director. There is an air of elegiac nostalgia to a style of cinema that might be passing away which Scorsese reflected on with his comments about Marvel superhero films. Ironic that The Irishman only got a limited cinema release as its main platform is Netflix.

Amazing acting, great story lines and some twists. Loved how the story was told through the eyes of De Niro's character as he was at the end of his life.

For anyone that likes gangster movies, it is worth a watch - high quality actors from across the great gangster films. The only negative is that it lasts 3.5 hours. This would put me off watching it again soon, but definitely worth seeing for the first time.

Kept me glued throughout - defo give it a watch. You won't be disappointed.

You have to be absolutely out of your mind to legitimately think that this is Scorcese at his best and ignore all the flaws in this movie. Yes, I get it, he made a lot of great movies in his time, but this isn't one of them.

A scene early on with Deniro beating someone up sums up the movie pretty well. The random no-name actor getting beat up is the only one exhibiting any emotion, as Deniro's character and his daughter sleepwalk their way through the scene like most of the cast does through most other scenes. It can be a bit hard to tell though since the camera zooms out so far that you can hardly see their faces, probably in an effort to avoid using the piss poor de-aging effects during an "action" scene, but it doesn't much matter because it's still close enough that we can see Deniro noticeably physically struggling to get through the scene. It looks awful and its depressing to see Deniro like this and to realize that Scorcese thought this scene was ok like this (why would they not have just used a stand-in here?), and this is pretty much how the movie feels in general.

This is a very noticeably weak effort from Scorcese. Most of the characters are wooden and just seem bored to be there. Pesci and Deniro are shockingly lifeless here. Pacino seems to be the only one giving any effort, but even his performance only comes off like a pale imitation of his old self.

Again, the de-aging effects are very weak and it's pretty jarring to see the flashback version of Deniro's character be referred to as if he's a young man (Pesci even calls him KID), but still looks like he's about 50.

There are a ton of side characters introduced, most of which disappear immediately after their introductions and serve no real purpose. Likewise there are many vestigial scenes that serve no purpose to advance either plot or character.

The plot is of course your typical gangster fare that we've seen from Scorcese so many times already. Guy gets into a life of crime, rises in the ranks, gets rich and lives it up, and then everything comes crashing down because he and everyone else he knows are absolutely terrible people, blah blah blah, we've seen it all before, but you know, you take something more recent of his like The Wolf of Wall Street and even though it uses that same old formula it still manages to be interesting because the characters have such personality and style and they keep your eyes glued to the conflict even though you already know exactly where it's going.

Here? Not so much. The Irishman is an absolutely unremarkable mobster story with completely forgettable characters that don't seem at all interested in their roles and some production values and cinematography that the so-called king of cinema should be embarrassed to be associated with, and let me tell you, you people defending this weak excuse for a film aren't doing Scorcese or "cinema" any favors by blindly swallowing this crap and acting like it's the greatest thing you've ever seen. If you're so willing to suck down any product, no matter how bad, just because it has a big time famous name attached to it than you're really no better than the popcorn action movies and fans that you're so quick to condemn.

As someone who's seen every Scorcese film before this, this is a 5/10 AT BEST and I will never pretend otherwise just because he did a lot of great films in the past.

Classic Scorsese . De Niro is the best he's been for years . Pacino is really magnetic and charming . But for me, Joe Pesci is the standout. Quietly deadly, magnetic , loyal, complicated, its him that will get the Oscar . Saw it at the cinema ( sorry Netflix but I am not watching Scorsese at home ) and it was superb. Oh Anna Paquin is used quite cleverly as well. Good actress . Decent performance Go and see it at the cinema . You will remember the masters returning for one last ride

Peoples are losing their minds over the sainted director, forgetting the movie. Sure, it's well made, fascinating history. But it's second nature for De Niro, and Pacino overreaches at times. The third reel is repetitive over the decline of the De Niro character. Would be a better movie at 2hr 30. In fact, I thought it had ended about then, but it meandered on another hour.