The Irishman

The Irishman Movie Review

It is no news to write about the introduction of the most awaited movie in the last couple of years. Since its announcement in 2014 and ongoing talks since 2012, we all have been waiting for this movie. This movie stars the best living legends of this world: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci. The movie is directed by Martin Scorsese. All the above said names have won Oscars and they need no introduction.  "I heard you paint houses" is the dialogue with which the movie starts and continues to explain the meaning of this phrase throughout the movie. If you haven't seen it, don't worry there are no spoilers ahead. 

Story Of The Irishman

The Irishman is a story of an Irish retired army man Frank Sheeran. He is a truck driver by occupation who delivers beef to his clients. An introduction to a mafia man in a club changes his line of occupation and he soon starts to paint the houses. Climbing the ladder and being loyal to his boss Jimmy Hoffa makes him the leader of the Union Local and an important man in the mafia. Trying to balance his personal and professional life, Frank inclines towards the professional life and states his choices as "I was trying to protect you all." The story follows the life of Frank and Jimmy Hoffa and how things take a U-Turn as life goes by.

Review Of The Irishman

The Irishman spans over a period of around 40 years with actors who were playing the part being 75+ years in age. It was a challenge to make them young and Martin took no risk in achieving that. Robert De Niro has a surprising transformation which is quite noticeable if you follow him in any way. The use of CGI did increase the budget of the movie which made them lose a lot of production firms, but it was worth it.

The acting has been great. I mean, what do you expect from the three living legends acting and the greatest director (especially mafia movies) directing them. 

Recently Martin told in an interview that, "It was not needed to say Action and Cut while shooting the movie. They would start on their own and continue the scene after scene after scene on their own." This only depicts how great acting they would have done in the movie. With Robert De Niro taking more than 90% of the screen time, it was indeed a pleasure to see Niro and Pacino sitting together. 

The direction has followed the usual Scorsese rule. He tries to build up the scene with some reel time. The scene where Frank is picked up by Jimmy's son is a good 10 minute talking about fishes. Another scene with Joe and Robert talking about the daughters of Frank takes some screen time. This has led to overall movie duration to be 3 hours and 30 minutes but it would not feel that long. The direction is as perfect as it can be and the screenplay has garnished it on the top.

The movie is amazing and one of its kind in terms of transformations, acting and directions. This movie is very highly recommended to watch.