Not Worth the Buy-in

Rating: 6/10 (30 November 2019)

Let me start by saying that the Irishman is incredibly acted and flawlessly shot. From a purely cinematic standpoint, it's gold.
That doesn't stop it from being meandering, self-indulgent, overly-long, and derivative.
Even more so than this year's far superior Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Irishman is a grueling test of patience. Gone is the frenetic energy of Scorcese's better films. The bones of Goodfellas and Casino are here, but those bones are dried and decayed.
The pacing of the Irishman is a downright slog. If you thought the Godfather was slow, you ain't seen nothing yet. The Irishman overstays its welcome telling a story that should have been wrapped in half the time. Many pointless scenes go nowhere, and they do it slowly. This within itself isn't always a bad thing with the right pacing, but here it is lazily delivered and indulges in the star-power on the screen without ever giving the viewer a second thought. Some scenes are virtually repeated multiple times saying the same things between the same characters with almost no variance in a mind-numbingly boring manner.
Call me an uncultured swine, but the Irishman is just boring. And the payoff is non-existent. Don't watch this expecting to be gripped like you were when you watched a dozen of Scorcese's better movies.
Had they cut an hour from the runtime and tightened the script, this could have been a masterclass. As it stands, it is a bloated but well-acted snoozefest with some interesting parts that make up a less-than-interesting whole.
I'm being generous with a 6.5/10. The acting really is incredible (Pesci!!) once you get over the CGI plasticity of the flashback scenes, and the look and feel of the cinematography is undoubtedly the classic work of Scorcese. However, this is a derivative shell of his better works and it spends 3 and a half hours saying the same things over and over while it slowly walks in place getting nowhere.