The Irishman is an interesting experiment made by a Veteran who isn't afraid of trying new things for better and worse...

Rating: 7/10 (5 February 2020)

...The film didn't seem too long despite the fact that objectively the running time is very long. It also felt very much like a film, I'm glad it wasn't cannibalised for TV.
It's a solid film, impressive sometimes and ordinary other times, the Jimmy Hoffa posturing in -front of a microphone business was sometimes a little rote, Pacino coming off a little one-note at first despite the fact that the book hinges on it and it's a story that (as raised in the film) has passed out of public consciousness now. Maybe it's because it's called The Irishman that I went in not expecting it to revolve entirely around Jimmy Hoffa until a wikipedia on the source material afterwards. (Who am I kidding, it was during).
Which brings me to the Title Card that flashes up: I Heard You Paint Houses, which at first I thought must have been a title card, but by the end I knew was Scorcese being subversive and subtle as usual, having his cake and eating it. I enjoyed that.
More subversion for me comes in the form of (eventually) Anna Paquin's daughter character. Much maligned recently for its lack of dialogue, I actually think the role has more presence than any of the other nonsense. Most dialogue is as sociopathic and soulless and workmanlike as the man himself, Jimmy a man broken and remade as a killer by the War, and so much of it is meaningless. Anna Paquin's stare, her broken accusatory look, pained but as if suppressing permanently, was actually very powerful, and to be able to link the child and adult actors wih the same feeling inside their characters is an inspired bit of casting and directing.
De Niro is stunning and every bit the actor throughout that he has been his whole life. Unlike Pacino who blossoms half way through, he's incredible from the start. His V/O is very very good (incidentally the device that makes it look like he's talking to no one is excessively effective and cheeky) and he manages to (unlike Joe Pesci) act young. With exception of the bit where he crushes the man's hand where he walks and moves like a 70-year-old man.
Which brings us to the CGI, undeniably groundbreaking, and sometimes effective to a wonderful degree, and other times completely jarring and awkward and pulls you straight out of the movie. The eyes feel wrong, almost throughout, too blue, too CGI and sometimes too doe-eyed and glasssy, and sometimes the lips are terrible. And that magic of having DeNiro play a young Brando in The Godfather has been completely removed, now a young actor can't prove his grit when an old actor can be rendered younger, it's a real shame, especially when the old can act young, but the young *are* young. That's a different spirit. But when it works it's seamless and often I couldn't tell when they were aged up or down and by how much.
Overall the film is quite good. That phone call scene is maybe the single best scene I've seen in a year, DeNiro is brilliant. The use of titles explaining the deaths of characters makes it more the special that in this film, Jimmy is still alive. It brings links between the Mafia and the Unions that I never knew, and the banality of some of these people and their lives mixed with the violence of their ends is effectively transmitted.
Also. Action Bronson is in it. The ending, regardless of the protracted runtime, is a riveting and subtle closing of the circle, the quietness of it struck me and stayed with me, an elegant master has created out of a handful of lines, how Jimmy sees himself and his end. To the Priest, and by proxy possibly to Saint Peter: "Don't shut the door all the way". Can an unrepentant man go to Heaven? Is Frank that man at all?