Scorsese's most ambitious project, if not quite a masterpiece

Rating: 9/10 (4 December 2019)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Morning * Monday Morning
In 1950s America, Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) is trying to get by, providing for his family as a delivery driver. However, when a containment of meat goes missing from one of his deliveries, he is hauled before the court on suspicion of stealing. A union lawyer gets him off, and Jimmy is taken to meet Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci), head of the Bufalino crime family, who control the unions. Bufalino has heard of his service record in Italy, and thinks Frank has what it takes to be a great hitman, which he takes to like a duck to water. When he is introduced to union supremo Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), it is the beginning of a deadly alliance throughout the years, of murder, corruption and betrayal.
The Irishman may be the most eagerly anticipated film of the year, Martin Scorsese's mammoth reunion of himself, Goodfellas stelwarts De Niro and Pesci, and De Niro's long time counterpart (for want of a better word) Pacino, in a no less than three and a half hour long adaptation of Charles Brandt's novel I Heard You Paint Houses. It's testament to what an arduous struggle it's been to make, that it was originally meant to be released years ago, but various issues put obstacles in the way, and now it has premiered on Netflix, before a theatrical release for those more inclined to see it that way. The result is a hugely admirable and rewarding experience, that stops a few shades sort of electrifying to be a masterpiece.
Determined to cater to the loyal fanbase, and recast the big name stars everyone's loved and grown up with over the years, Scorsese has placed messieurs De Niro and Pacino in the lead roles again, despite their advanced ages, and so to make things look more realistic, a lot has been made of the 'de-aging' application applied to the stars, in a ground breaking move designed to keep everyone happy. While the grey hairs and face lines are removed from De Niro, it's a sad truth that early on in the role, he still looks too old for it, struggling to convince as a man with a young family just starting out, simply on account of, well, his age (sadly.) While this threatens to sully things early on, after a while you're thoroughly absorbed in the story, and his performance is no less committed, matched by Pacino, in bombastic, powered up mode as the real life Hoffa, whose disappearance this applies some very interpretive speculation to.
It doesn't really have exactly the right amount of dynamism and magnetism it needs to keep your attention for such a long length, but it never bores you, or makes you lose interest either, a spectacular accomplishment in itself for a film that is one of the few to rival Lawrence of Arabia in length, or, indeed, De Niro and Scorsese's 1984 epic Once Upon a Time in America (which I've never seen!) ****