Scorsese's tale of famed union leader hit compromised by slow pacing and a sense of déjà vu

Rating: 6/10 (3 January 2020)

The Irishman is based on the life of the film's narrator, Frank Sheeran, a truck driver turned hitman, who claims he killed both the notorious Mafioso Joey Gallo and famed Teamsters union leader, Jimmy Hoffa.

Sheeran (Robert DeNiro) begins the narration as an old man in a nursing home. His account presents two flashbacks: the first recounting how he started out as a Teamster union truck driver in his 20s and a second, when he's driving with his mentor Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci), the head of a Northeastern Pennsylvania crime family, along with their two wives, to attend the wedding of Bufalino's cousin's daughter in Detroit in the 1970s.

The "drive to Detroit" foreshadows the events leading up to the second act "dark moment" (where Sheeran ends up murdering Hoffa). Like many scenes in this 3 ½ hour film, the extended "pit stops" depicting the banal conversations between Bufalino and Sheeran in the car (and on the road), just end up slowing the film's pace down considerably. It's designed to emphasize one of the film's major themes: the banality of evil of Mafia goons-a point made in almost every scene in this film ad infinitum.

Scorsese uses special effects to de-age his principals in the flashbacks, so DeNiro is supposed to look in his 20s when we first meet him. Unfortunately, he looks nowhere what he used to look like (in real life) when he was in Taxi Driver back in the 70s. Here he looks more like he's in his mid-40s. But Scorsese is much more successful in de-aging Pesci, who appears true to his chronological age in the early part of the film.

The first part of the film-the expository scenes- is long-winded for sure but it kept my interest. This is where the Teamsters' union lawyer Bill Bufalino (Ray Romano) gets Sheeran off the hook when he's accused of theft by his company after a load of meat disappears from the back of Sheeran's truck following a delivery.

You could say that the film's "inciting incident" occurs when Sheeran is formally introduced to Russell Bufalino. It's under Bufalino's direction that Sheeran gets further immersed in crime to the point where he begins murdering people.

Unlike DeNiro, who not only does not look Irish but basically recapitulates his usual gangster performance, Pesci steals the show as Sheeran's low-key protector, who appears quite menacing despite his demeanor as an insincere mediator.

The break into the second act is when Sheeran begins working for Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) as his assistant. The first half of act two proves to be the weakest part of the film since the focus is lost on Sheeran as our protagonist, with Hoffa suddenly emerging as the key player. Pacino's acting, like DeNiro, is already too familiar, to convince us that we're watching Jimmy Hoffa.

Instead of dramatizing the conflicts between the characters, Scorsese resorts to his old bag of tricks, using narration to move the plot along. What it all amounts to is a history lesson about Bobby Kennedy's vendetta (as attorney general) against Hoffa, which only ended after JFK's assassination.

Things pick up again at the midpoint when the focus is back on Sheeran who ends up killing Joey Gallo in Little Italy. While this scene effectively recreates the Gallo "hit"-necessary to emphasize the escalating nature of Sheeran's growing involvement as a mobster--Scorsese also appears to revel in the violence which he appears to condemn (why is the 1971 murder of Joseph Columbo filmed in slow motion?).

There is a good scene in prison involving Anthony "Pro" Provenzano (Stephen Graham), a union boss, who has bad blood with Hoffa over being denied his pension (Hoffa explains he gets his due to the more violent nature of Pro's criminal conviction).

Eventually a group of mobsters conclude that Hoffa, once released from prison (and now trying to get his old job back as union boss), has been manipulating pension funds and cutting them out of profits in their respective rackets. Bufalino in one of the best scenes asks Sheeran to "talk some sense" into Hoffa, but the hothead ex-union boss "won't listen to reason."

This takes place at a testimonial dinner for Sheeran where Hoffa is the keynote speaker. With more judicious editing, Scorsese could have gotten right to the point in the dramatic scene where Sheeran attempts to "read the riot act" to Hoffa. But the dinner scene just goes on for too long which is the case for many of the scenes here in this movie.

The same slow pacing applies to the scene leading up to Hoffa's murder. Often Scorsese resorts to seemingly improvised dialogue, again highlighting his "banality of evil" theme. Particularly ineffective is all the patter about the smelly "fish" in the car right before Hoffa is driven to the death house. The comic relief might have worked in "Good Fellas," but now it all seems shop worn.

Scorsese does a good job recapitulating the various fates of his mobsters. Sheeran, in his final days, comes off as an empty vessel, particularly in highlighting the estrangement of his daughter Peggy (she blames him for Hoffa's murder, a man she was close to during her childhood).

Probably Scorsese's best point about Sheeran is that he's unable to acknowledge his own involvement in immoral acts-instead he rationalizes his behavior to another daughter-by claiming he was simply trying to "protect" his family.

The Irishman could have been much better had Scorsese used more judicious editing but even so, his tale of gangsters' banality of evil also seems to have been told one too many times before.