The Limits of Loyalty and Power. . .

Rating: 8/10 (28 November 2019)

A thoughtful journey through the landscapes in which the decisions and actions of a man's life bury him in layer after layer of separation from the known, the familiar, the loved, until at last he's alone in a wheelchair, IV plugged into a vein, in the corner of a single room in an extended care facility, at twilight, while the Five Satins croon "In the Still of the Night" and the camera fades to black. The story would have been richer if the men's wifes and children had been given voices to speak their perspective on the external shape of this patriarchal world. And Scorsese's yearning fascination with the energies of dark capitalism give the characters of Jimmy Hoffa, Frank Sheeran, and Russell Bufalino more grandeur than their real-life counterparts could ever have deserved. Power, and loyalty cease to be compelling when they're corrupted by flawed morality - they become frightening at first, and then a repellant conduit to the death-in-life of prison, or a hospice bedroom. The actors' craft is so fine that it deserves a more multifaceted, & ultimately more complexly truthful script.
I was thrilled by De Niro's restraint, Pacino's well-tempered pleasure in leadership, and especially by Joe Pesci's gently-expressed implacable will. Pesci's Russell Bufalino is the gravitational centre of this film's world - he welcomes the friendship with De Niro's Frank Sheeran, and accepts Sheeran's loyalty, then reveals how loyalty must give way to the application of 'justice' when hubris requires punishment. And I admire the commitment of all the members of Scorsese's troupe - Bobby Cannavale, Ray Romanow, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Harvey Keitel, Steve Van Zandt, and so many others - for their expert creation of the family, friends, and competitors in that bleak wiseguy world. I was especially pleased to see Welker White playing Jo Hoffa - her role alongside Pacino seemed the perfect fate for her character in Goodfellas as the supercilious young cocaine mule who won't fly without her lucky hat. Her presence made me wish even more strongly that she, and Anna Paquin as Peggy Sheeran, had been given extended voices in the film. Scorsese's work always contains that depth of actor/character texture, and would be richer for giving scope to both sexes.
One other caveat: I wish that Scorsese had found young actors to create the early episodes of Sheeran's story. As De Niro did for Brando in The Godfather Part 2 so someone should have done for each of the three central characters, to amplify the effects of age, time, and consequences, on the men's lives. Despite computer technology, the actors were old from the start, physically and emotionally, in a way which neutralised the effect of their progression through the lives they chose. We want to see the arc of their experiences, rather than to be lodged from the beginning in the weight of the inevitable ending.