"Goodfellas" Redux

Rating: 8/10 (5 December 2019)

"The Irishman" is the most "Goodfellas"-ish movie from Martin Scorsese since 1995's "Casino." That's a long time for devotees to wait to see the master director return to the format he virtually invented. Is the wait worth it? Yes and no. "The Irishman" is no "Goodfellas," but I'm also not sure it's trying to be, though it's almost impossible not to compare it. For the first half of the film, it's hard not to be dogged by the sense that we've seen all this before but by artists (many of them the same artists) who had more energy for it twenty and thirty years ago. But then late in the movie, we realize that this film has more on its mind than being yet another retread of a mob life epic, and it's the film's last, quiet moments that earn it a place of its own in Scorsese's canon rather than just a Scorsese rip off of Scorsese.
"The Irishman" is very long, but I didn't feel its length that much. And it's the last half hour or so that gives the film it's punch, and only because of everything that's preceded it, so I wouldn't want it to be any shorter. This movie continues past the point where films like "Goodfellas" and "Casino" end and suggests that the sometimes hellish life of being a gangster may be nothing compared to the hell of growing old. The main character, played by Robert De Niro, is a mafia "yes" man, carrying out orders while trying hard not to think too much about them. As a result, he gives pretty much his entire allegiance to one man (played by Joe Pesci), while alienating everyone else in his life, from his family to close friends (notably Jimmy Hoffa, played by Al Pacino). What happens, then, when the man from whom you've always taken your orders is no longer around to give them? What happens when everyone else who has comprised the very small world in which you have lived has died and left you behind? What happens when you have nothing but time to reflect on the man you have been and the things you have done? What happens when the one thing that made you feel vital no longer exists? It's not hard to believe that Scorsese the filmmaker is using this film to ask himself some of the questions he asks of his characters, and that's what gives "The Irishman" a sense of ruminative pathos and makes something richer out of what could have been a glib genre exercise.
This is a pretty engrossing, always entertaining, and at times very funny film. But there is one major drawback that I had a heck of a time getting past, and I'm not sure I ever did completely. And that's the fact that everyone in this is simply too old to be playing the characters they're playing. Robert De Niro, vibrant as he may still be, is 76 years old, and, de-aging digital technology aside, he cannot pull off thirty and forty. He and Pesci, similarly de-aged, just look weird and kind of creepy for a good part of the film, and even if the technology can make De Niro look somewhat younger, he still moves like an old man, something most noticeable in a scene where he kicks the crap out of a grocery store owner. At times the movie smacks of a bunch of kind of sad old dudes who are past their prime trying to recapture the glory days of their youths, but then again, given where the movie goes, maybe that's part of the point.
One thing, or rather one person, I can heap unqualified praise on is Al Pacino as Jimmy Hoffa. Pacino OWNS this movie. He hasn't been this good in a long, long time.
Grade: A