Scorsese delivers

Rating: 7/10 (10 January 2020)

Ask and you shall receive. And we did receive. A star studded, Martin Scorsese mob movie.
This was a great movie. It starts slow: De Niro's acting, and overall appearance, were stiff frankly. The movie picks up pace just after the mid-point. Where the actors' appearances are concerned, it was hard to tell the characters' ages in this piece, film makers having digitally altered the actors' appearances to make them look younger or older according to the movie scenes' timeframe. For when the characters were supposed to look younger, I found this unnatural and outright distracting, especially with De Niro's character. The illusion is lost somehow and in essence there's only so much make-up and digital enhancing can do for an actor.
Naturally actors will move as smoothly as their bodies allow them. Ultimately the actors' ages were telling in this movie. There was one scene where De Niro's character was giving a beating to another character but the way he moved around in that scene really showed a much older guy than the character's age, to a point where it looked like the other actor taking the beating was actually helping De Niro with the action. You can't help but cringe watching that specific scene.
Acting wise worth mentioning both Al Pacino's and Joe Pesci's performances were stellar and totally made up for the early stiff start of the movie. For me Al Pacino has not lost a single drop of energy with age. Ray Romano's and Stephen Graham's performances were the surprising show stealer in my opinion.
This is really a good movie, worth spending the 3 hours to watch in its entirety. Some are calling this a masterpiece. Frankly I've seen far better Scorsese movies. It's not the classic Scorsese movie that Taxi Driver or Goodfellas are, and it may not be historically accurate, but it's an entertaining, thought provoking, and star-studded movie.