Alternate titles include "The Grandfather" or "Oldfellas"

Rating: 8/10 (6 December 2019)

A new addition to the new retirement-age mob film genre - a niche to be sure. While the film is often hard to take seriously we are lucky that it doesn't try to be taken as such. It takes every opportunity to lighten its source material with subtle but gripping comedy. The rotating door of italian mob-men and their continious conniving plots were often lost on me - strange that a hulking 3 and a half hour film can still seem to rush so many elements and yet seem to drag on for others.
A very large feat of visual magic was taken on in order to tell the story of younger Sheehan and Bufalino - a feat that in my (WOAH those are startlingly blue) eyes went largely KAPOOT. I couldn't tell how old they were supposed to be because De Niro didn't act the age and it looked like the effects just painted over all their facial wrinkles to leave a weirdly simulated "young face". I can recall a scene where De Niro was beating a grocer and it was probably the gentlest, feeblest beating I've seen depicted. The film picks up at the entrance of Hoffa (Pacino), who brings a lightness but also a weight to the film that it lacks in its earlier half. The friendship between Hoffa and Sheeran feel at the films core - which makes the ending that much more devastating. The audience will be left both betrayed and shocked - especially since the film lacks any deep emotional gravity preceding its conclusion. The most original and funny mafia movie to grace the screen - even if it is your laptop screen at 1 am. 7.8/10