The Only Film I've Seen All Year

Rating: 9/10 (29 November 2019)

This is the only film I've seen all year.
Now don't get me wrong, I've seen a whole lot of moving images with weeping actors and swelling music and pretty lighting and expensive CGI and all that. But they weren't actually FILMS, just a bunch of stage directions and cliched gibberish thrown together by lethargic boardroom committees of affirmative action-hired hacks and screentested before herds of ADD-afflicted cattle.
This, on the other hand, is a genuine work of cinema, with every scene a pleasure, culminating in the kind of thoroughly satisfying, harmonious whole that at some undisclosed point in the past decade became just a thing of the past. It's now true to say they don't make them like this anymore: there's no identity politics, no feminism, no product placement, no hiring quotas, no awkwardly-inserted fashionable causes or talking points. Just a really good, solid story, perfectly told, beautifully shot and immaculately acted by every single player in the film. EVERYONE brings their A-game. No-one coasts and grabs the money and runs. It's as if everyone knows this is almost certainly the last mob film Scorsese will ever direct, and they all want to be a part of history, which this is. It's an instant classic.
True, it may retread ground we've walked before in earlier Scorsese movies like Goodfellas, and even later TV shows inspired by those, such as The Sopranos. But we don't care, because that ground is such a rare and rewarding place to be.
Really, the only weak spot I can think of is that de Niro never once looks or sounds like an Irishman, and his blue contact lenses occasionally make his eyes look like some kind of alien lizard. Which is a little distracting. Also, the digital de-aging was possibly not needed. But that's honestly all I can complain of: it's his best performance in over 20 years, all the way back to Jackie Brown and Casino. And it's the best Pacino has been in all that time, too. Amazing to see him working with Scorsese at last.
I don't know how much of the story is true, but then in this case I don't really care all that much, I was just glad to be along for the ride. And even after 3Â½ hours, I didn't want that ride to end.