Many ups but as many downs....

Rating: 7/10 (27 November 2019)

Whoa...this was a looong ride! The Irishman is a mammoth movie trying to do many things, perhaps too many to succeed in all of them.
Let's start from the goodies: undoubtedly the movie is sustained by extraordinary acting performances, especially remarkable those by Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci. What De Niro (and CGI) does with his facial expressions all along the movie is just in itself worth the money of the ticket. On top of that, the dialogues are incredibly juicy and the movie overall is extremely well crafted.
On the less positive side, The Irishman struggles to keep the story focused, with some outstanding peaks and some moments of lull - understandably so given its length; I mean, even masterworks like the Odyssey and the Iliad (just slightly longer than The Irishman) have inevitably many highs and as many lows, so Scorsese's ambitious work does not escape this everlasting law. Moreover, he introduces so many characters that he makes it very difficult for the viewer to keep track of them and of their relationships.
All in all, I had very high expectations for this movie and they were not all kept.