Film Review - The Irishman (2019)

The Irishman is the new movie by both Netflix and Martin Scorsese and concerns the life of Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) a man who was driving meat trucks and later finds himself doing business with the legendary Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), business that isn’t always within the letter of the law.

The Irishman firstly is very well made, Marty might be in his 80s now but he hasn’t lost his ability to craft a movie that is never boring to look at, the way that the costume design, production design and cinematography reflect the changing decades is very very good and the deaging technology is used very very well here and the High Dynamic Range on the Netflix 4K stream does a very good job in hiding whatever defects you might go looking for and I went looking and couldn’t find any.

As for the performances well Mr De Niro is truly great and it feels like it has been a very very very long time since he has been this good in a movie, if he was to win Best Actor at the Academy Awards next year for this performance I wouldn’t mind one bit, it was also nice to see Mr Joe Pesci in a movie again even though he doesn’t have the biggest role in this movie.

But alas I have to say that at 3 and a half hours, this movie’s storytelling which is well done by Mr Steve Zaillian after about 2 hours and 40 minutes it started to feel like it was being stretched very thin and it also became a little predictable to me but I’m someone who has seen the 1992 Hoffa movie with Jack Nicholson and Danny Devito and knows to some extent how the Hoffa story plays out.

And speaking of Hoffa well Mr Pacino I was nervous about him in that role because I thought Mr Nicholson was so good in his movie and again after a while I began to tire of Mr Pacino’s voice, now don’t get me wrong its nice to see him playing a straight role in a movie rather than a parody but after a while I got a little tired of his shrill and nasily voice and again I just didn’t think he measured up to the bravado and gusto that Mr Nicholson brought to the role of Hoffa in his movie.

And so that was the Irishman and look its not a bad movie not at all but it was one that didn’t do an awful lot for me in the long run as I felt it got a bit thin story wise with the 3.5 hour runtime and Pacino’s Hoffa got on my nerves after a while, 3 out of 5.