Good but with missed opportunities

Rating: 7/10 (26 December 2019)

Based on the novel "I Heard You Paint Houses" by Charles Brandt: beginning in the 1950s, Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) is a meat delivery truck driver with a young family in Pennsylvania. Gradually, he is recruited into the world of organized crime via Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) and later via Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), the head of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Legendary director Martin Scorsese does a great job in orchestrating the many scenes in this crime saga of three-and-a-half hours especially scenes involving violent crime. And his trio of legendary lead actors also live up to high expectations. Pacino is especially a joy. No other actor can shout and swear as well as he does. He can make the viewer envious with the desire to rant as perfectly as he does.
Despite the massive length of the film, there is never a dull moment including a superb dialogue scene between De Niro and Pacino during an awards ceremony. However, the film has missed various opportunities. Little is done to explain or even hint at how working-class family man Sheeran could convert to a life of crime without even the appearance of inner-conflict. A Wikipedia article on Sheeran explains how his experiences in World War II were "when he first developed a callousness to the taking human life". Exploration of this connection would have given the film more depth.
Something else is missing that would have made the film richer: more feminine presence. The best films in the organized crime genre include "The Godfather" (1972), "The Godfather Part II" (1974) and Scorsese's "Goodfellas" (1990). While men were clearly in the spotlight in these films as in "The Irishman", the older films gave prominence to female relatives of the main characters including roles played by Diane Keaton and Talia Shire in the "Godfather" films plus Lorraine Bracco in "Goodfellas". The inclusion of solid, supporting female roles enhanced those older films adding to the many other riches that made those films great. The female presence is lacking in "The Irishman". The role of Peggy, one of Frank's four daughters, is one that clearly could have been expanded. As a girl, she has a quiet charm that attracts special attention from her "uncles" Russell and Jimmy. She also seems to have an intuition as to what her father does for a living and she does not approve. But she is rarely on screen and when she is, she says too little. In the film's later section, there is good discussion between Frank and one of his other daughters (Dolores) but by this time, it feels like too little, too late.
Where "The Irishman" seems to advance the genre is in scenes of Frank as an older man looking back on his past trying to reflect and take stock. This element is welcome in a genre that rarely reflects the damage of lost lives: not just those who were killed and brutalized but also those whose souls were lost in perpetrating the wicked acts.