THE IRISHMAN - Scorsese, DeNiro, Pacino, Pesci - Fall

[Monterey Jack]

9/10

This IS pretty phenomenal. The sheer length of the film does mute its overall impact, and yet I never once looked at my watch, so maybe it'll play better on Netflix when you can pause it a few times to stretch and take a pee. I'm very glad I had a chance to see it theatrically, however, as Scorsese's visual sense demands that kind of larger-than-life spread. It's not one of Scorsese's whirligig gangster flicks like Goodfellas or Casino, where it's constantly flamboyant and show-offy, and as such may disappoint those expecting non-stop whackings and gore, but as an twilight-of-career summation of his crime films over the last 40+ years, it's a moving portrait of a certain way of life coming to an end. If you have access to a theater showing it (Kendall Square will continue to have it through next week), I highly recommend this.

[AndyDursin]

Live on Netflix. I'll get to it, but not until Thanksgiving is over!

[Monterey Jack]

Live on Netflix. I'll get to it, but not until Thanksgiving is over!

Yeah, this won't be the best movie to watch in the middle of a turkey coma.

[AndyDursin]

This is exactly what I am doing...Episode 1 in the books!

[AndyDursin]

I'm about halfway through, will reserve comments until I'm done except for this: it is incredibly WEIRD to watch a movie where elderly actors are playing their younger versions. They can employ all the digital technology all they want -- and it's really not that effective -- but even if it DID work more credibly, it wouldn't change the fact that the three leads are all closing in on 80.

You can see it in how they sound, and how they move, no matter how many wrinkles they scrub from their faces.

When you watch DeNiro kind of gingerly meander down a street to beat up the shopkeeper who put his hands on his daughter, you can see it's an 80 year old DeNiro -- it's not the younger, spry DeNiro from GOODFELLAS, even though he's supposed to be the same age.

It's just kind of odd, and it takes you out of the time and place. But it also kind of is in keeping with the whole enterprise -- it feels like OLDFELLAS, and there's a notable lack of "energy" in the filmmaking as a whole IMO. Scorsese doesn't exactly bring a lot of "zap" to this film. Not saying how I feel one way or another about it (and it's certainly keeping me watching), but that part of it is definitely "off".

[Monterey Jack]

I'm about halfway through, will reserve comments until I'm done except for this: it is incredibly WEIRD to watch a movie where elderly actors are playing their younger versions. They can employ all the digital technology all they want -- and it's really not that effective -- but even if it DID work more credibly, it wouldn't change the fact that the three leads are all closing in on 80.

You can see it in how they sound, and how they move, no matter how many wrinkles they scrub from their faces.

When you watch DeNiro kind of gingerly meander down a street to beat up the shopkeeper who put his hands on his daughter, you can see it's an 80 year old DeNiro -- it's not the younger, spry DeNiro from GOODFELLAS, even though he's supposed to be the same age.

It's the same as hearing a frail, 90-year-old James Earl Jones reprise iconic voice work in the Lion King remake, or in Star Wars: Rogue One or the SW: Rebels cartoon...yeah, you wouldn't want to hear someone else's voice come out of those characters, but it's not the booming, hale & hearty voice we grew up listening to. For De Niro's shopkeeper beatdown scene, they couldn't have just digitally popped his face onto the body of a younger stunt double for that one bit? That was the most creaky, arthritic beatdown in the history of cinema. And his character was supposed to be, what, in his forties at the time, maybe early fifties? In real life, De Niro was still physically spry in the mid/late-90s fare like Heat and Ronin, and he was around that age at the time. I mean, they could digitally de-age Clint Eastwood by about fifty years and make another Dirty Harry, but he'd still move and sound like an ancient ninety-year-old (which also made the superfluous additional scenes in the ersatz-"directors cut" of The Good, The Bad & The Ugly so distracting, suddenly Clint and Eli Wallach sounding like the raspy, seventy and eighty-year-old men they were at the time).

[AndyDursin]

For De Niro's shopkeeper beatdown scene, they couldn't have just digitally popped his face onto the body of a younger stunt double for that one bit? That was the most creaky, arthritic beatdown in the history of cinema.

LOL, exactly. I felt it also when DeNiro goes to throw the guns off the pier -- he's barely able to spin himself around as he throws them each about a foot into the water.

[AndyDursin]

I thought the film was good, probably 7.5/10. I did not think it was great.

One thing I can understand is why people might find it dull. I didn't, but then again, I understand about the importance of Hoffa and the history it's depicting. If you aren't aware, the movie doesn't offer an engagement to draw the audience in. This isn't GOODFELLAS, where it was depicting a WORLD of mobsters and danger and interest, in addition to its central characters. There's no "in" to THE IRISHMAN. It's essentially a three-character drama, limited in scope to those characters, whose significance is built upon the history and knowledge the audience may...or may not have...for that period.

It's one reason I think the film suffers in comparison to GOODFELLAS. That was a movie that has so many rich components -- depiction of time and place, funny interludes, romantic ones, and also so many supporting faces of note who you remember. There's nobody in THE IRISHMAN who makes an impression outside the central triangle or is even able to. It's a straight-ahead film, strictly focused on its leads, that misses all the color and the scope of Scorsese's previous trips to this genre, even though it runs substantially longer and encompasses a wider swath of "societal importance". (Anna Paquin having 1 line of dialogue may "prove a point" but it also proves a point in that the movie is missing an entire dramatic component that GOODFELLAS had via Lorraine Bracco's function to its story).

Again, I liked it and respect it -- I'd even probably watch it again -- but this notion that it's some masterwork of cinema has been unsurprisingly blown out of proportion. I also found the direction and look of the film to be disappointingly bland also. The trouble is that so many recent would-be critical darlings have been so WEAK, it's been overpraised to a degree that people will also be amplifying their reactions to its shortcomings.