Want to know my favorite part of The Irishman? It’s small, but left a big impression. Mobster Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) has sent his tool, Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), on a mobster/Teamster errand. Step one of the errand is delivering a truck to David Ferrie. Unless you are a history buff, that name ain’t gonna mean much; David Ferrie was an underworld figure allegedly involved in the murder of John F. Kennedy. Here’s the part that struck me: Joe Pesci himself played Ferrie as a chain-smoking, ADD-addled, hyper-liar in the film JFK. Ah, JFK. Now there’s a great film. This one? Less.
Martin Scorsese seems to have all the answers in The Irishman. He knows how and why Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) died. He knows who killed Jimmy Hoffa. He didn’t stop at that. He also knows why the Teamsters got Kennedy elected and why the mob had it in for JFK, what Howard Hunt was up to before he became a Watergate burglar and even gave us a probable reason for why conservatives still hate unions. He stopped short of giving us a reason that Coca-Cola changed formulas. Those are all great reasons to love The Irishman, especially when the film asks questions like, “How involved was the mob in the assassination of JFK?” and “Should Cadillacs come standard with an extortion compartment?”
Then again, there are other ways to feel for The Irishman which include three-plus hours of an indifferently amoral and unrepentant protagonist, an unending stable of repugnant old men, and a Jimmy Hoffa that reminded me a great deal of Donald Trump — which is to say the Pacino version of Hoffa is loud, abusive, intolerant, selfish, and perpetually peeved. It’s funny how much better I understand mob films after having endured three years of President Trump; I don’t like them any more than I used to, but I sure understand them better.
Frank, The Irishman himself, is our hero, a trucker turned “house painter” who had no qualms about engaging in dirty work long before he became a mob hitman. The film is told in a series of reflections from the old folks home where Frank lives about how Frank started as a mere beef thief and worked his way up to professional hitter. By stroke of dumb luck, it seems, Frank has outlasted all of his contemporaries. Most mobsters in the movie are introduced by their name and the date and manner of their untimely future violent death, which –admittedly- is a great way to introduce a mobster. Frank is almost entirely unemotional and passive about the things he’s seen and the people he’s hurt. He doesn’t know the families of the people he’s killed, so how can he feel for them? And this is the guy Martin Scorsese has asked us to follow for 3+ hours.
All I can say is making a hero out of the morally aloof Frank beats the alternatives: Pesci the mobster, Pacino as Trump/Hoffa, Harvey Keitel, Bobby Cannavale (this generation’s Chazz Palminteri) … anybody else you got hanging around your house, Marty? I imagine Scorsese keeping Harvey Keitel behind a giant glass case in his rec room with a sign reading, “in case of plot, break glass.”
One of the coups to The Irishman is that all the Scorsese regulars come (relatively) cheap these days; they’re just old. So the film has gotten around this with CGI magic; the regulars all play their digitally enhanced younger selves for the endless series of flashbacks. The problem is however “young” you’ve made these guys look, they still move like old men. Robert DeNiro issues a (physical) beat-down on behalf of his daughter early on in the film and my reaction while watching an old man doing what appeared to be water aerobics on another old man was, “Gee, be careful there; that could get infected.”
There was enough about The Irishman to appreciate from the POV of history, organized crime, the Teamsters, moral compromise, or just somebody who likes seeing people get whacked. Appreciation from a film-lovers’ POV, however, I found a little more difficult to come by. While I appreciated the set-up and the historical significance, I didn’t like anybody in the film. Frank was far too passive for the role he played, Russ too stomach-turning, and if I had to see any more of Pacino’s Hoffa, I’d want to kill him myself. Every.single.year, it seems, there is one film deliberately intended to appeal to the people of NYC exactly at the time awards and best-of-year lists happen. This film comes out right around the holidays and the five borough critics eat it up — lo and behold, just in time for some hardware, by golly! The Irishman is that film for 2019. If you like being manipulated in this fashion, by all means, honor it. Personally, I resent being told what I should like.
A mobster film got put on the table
So Scorsese trotted out who was able
Did he miss any fodder?
Leonardo, Ray Liotta…
Who else does he have in his stable?
Rated R, 209 Minutes (yes, two-hundred and nine)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Writer: Steven Zailian
Genre: Historic crime
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Necrophiliacs
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People who don’t give a flying fart about Jimmy Hoffa
Editor’s note: After writing this review, I see that Pesci and Pacino have both been nominated for this film. I cannot disguise my contempt for the Oscar voters at this moment. Was it old-timers day at the Academy? Aren’t great performances supposed to be ones you remember? Do you really think Pesci’s Russell Bufalino or Pacino’s Jimmy Hoffa represents a commitment to the profession, an actor who has thrown himself into a role, a performance you’ll talk about for years to come?
Let me help you out. Here are some superior supporting actor performances from films I know you saw because they got nominated for other stuff: Taika Waititi for Jojo Rabbit, Dean-Charles Chapman for 1917, Kang-ho Song or Woo-sik Choi for Parasite, Daniel Craig for Knives Out. And I don’t know if you saw these, but they too were far better than the standard gangsterism from Pesci/Pacino: Jamie Foxx for Just Mercy, Shia LeBeouf or Zack Gottsagen (whichever was up for supporting) for The Peanut Butter Falcon. Not only were all of these performances superior, every single one of them says something other than “old white man,” which is thought the Academy ought to consider, a lot, before selecting nominees.
