Wasted potential

Rating: 6/10 (5 April 2020)

I have a huge admiration for Scorsese, but this was not to the best of his ability. The pace was slow and it felt like there was too much repetiton and rumination of irrelevant details, while also glancing over the reasoning and motifs for some of (what seemed to be) the crucial points in the story. In my opinion the 3 and the half hours this movie is long is poorly used.
I like the idea of the movie and what it was *trying* to portray, but with so many characters showing up every 20 seconds in the first half of the movie and the general vagueness of what the focus is on in the partucular act, it leaves you with the weird combination of confusion, anticipation and boredom. The ending was sort of anticlimactic, although it fit with the general atmosphere and I particulary appreciated the symbolism in the last scene.
The acting was superb as expected and Robert De Niro never fails to amaze.
Lastly, I loved the experimenting with de-aging cgi contrary to the backlash and I'm excited to see how it developes and improves in the future of filmmaking.