Martin Scorsese indulges himself a bit too much

Rating: Null/10 (29 January 2020)

The Irishman sees Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci reunited to film yet another epic gangster film. This time with the addition of Al Pacino.
And these are great actors and a great director. Which means that there's bound to be some really good scenes in the film. And there are. Whenever any of the three actors share screen time, it has that awe to it. The rest of the cast is pretty forgettable, on the other hand, and even with such powerhouse actors, you need a good story to really prop them up.
Which is unfortunately the greatest failing of this film. Clocking in at three and a half hours, it's one of the longest films I've seen in years. And I have nothing against long films per se. Once Upon a Time in America, another gangster film of epic length, is one of my all-time favourite movies. But you need to keep it moving. You need to keep the story evolving. But in this film we learn the overall moral very early on. We learn the eventual fates of its key players very early on. So it's just a simple matter of going from dot to dot, until we get to the end. Which just about kills all the tension there is to be had.
Martin Scorsese obviously wanted to talk about growing old. He wanted to talk about looking back and regretting the choices you have made in your life, the paths you didn't take. And putting such a theme into a gangster film is not a bad idea. Especially when the one to do so is one of the acknowledged masters of the genre. Unfortunately, in this instance, I think we could have gotten a better movie out of these characters if we had kept the whole "growing old sucks, guys" stuff out of it.
Still, there are a lot of people that rave about this film. So I guess it must hit some notes with them that it simply didn't with me. And it has some really impressive stuff in it, I freely admit that. They just didn't come together for me. But perhaps they will, for you.