The Irishman

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🎙️ EPISODE 226: 12.18.19 The crime of Martin Scorsese's 25th feature film is not really in its length. You could fill seven seasons of a Netflix TELEVISION production with the real world lives this movie tries to unpack. Perhaps, Marty (age 77) or the three main characters (DeNiro and Pesci both 76, and Pacino, 79) have lost something off their fastball, and asking any of them to carry 209 minutes is, well, impossible. Not trying to be ageist, but this movie drags. It's not the brilliant return to a Goodfellas form that many seem to be gracing it as. It's great in moments, but as a whole, it's merely good. Scorsese nuts are sure to love it, but everyone else? Could go either way.

While Scorsese is no stranger to biopics, Jimmy Hoffa is the most famous subject he's tackled since Howard Hughes (The Aviator). Working with relatively unknown REAL people, like Ray Liotta's Henry Hill, serves this type of movie so much more. The audience isn't clouded with any preexisting notions of who that is because Goodfellas essentially functioned as his introduction. He still doesn't feel "real" to me. (And, yes, I understand DeNiro as the much more obscure Frank Sheeran is the lens here, but inserted into such momentous real life history — e.g., the JFK assassination — the film plays much more like Forrest Gump than I would have anticipated or cared for.)

Late in the game, the movie makes a unique tonal shift. When the story and the flashbacks catch up with each other, we're given some of the most slow sequences I can ever recall in a Scorsese film. Up until that point, the viewer had been subjected to non-stop exposition and plot movement. Finally, some extemporaneous dialogue! There is a long conversation about a fish in a car: what kind of fish it was, why you shouldn't put a fish in your car unless it's properly packaged, etc. It's really some of the most plodding stuff he's ever put on film and it's fantastic. I can't believe I'm saying that about something that happens after the two-hour mark of a 3.5 hour long movie, but it's true.

Unfortunately, after the climax of the film, we still have nearly 45 minutes to go. And that tonal shift completely evaporates. We're back in Scorsese voice-over hell and it's a completely dragged out, overly emotional, unearned final act that borders on being all-out comically bad at times. I think that without it, the film would earn a low-8 for me and not the middling 6 out of 10 I'm giving it.

Lastly, I was able to catch this in a movie theater. Seeing the Netflix's N logo and hearing that "bum-bum" chime as the only production bumper was an odd experience, as this was the first Netflix film for me IRL. With the landscapes for how and where we see things changing (and primed to REALLY change soon), I feel much like I felt about this: conflicted.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 225 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 227 ⫸

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