Borderline Masterpiece; Best Picture Oscar On Its Way- You Can Skip Half an Hour in the Middle Though if the Length Bothers You; Everything Else is Perfect

Rating: 9/10 (29 November 2019)

Skip 1:50-2:16 if you want to shorten the length, which is about 3 hours and 20 minutes. That section was tedious and could have been edited out with nothing lost.
The first 2 hours, as well as the final 30 minutes are all masterpiece material.
Joe Pesci will win Best Supporting Actor, De Niro will be nominated for Best Actor, especially for his acting in the final 30-45 minutes of the movie which sees him encounter and battle old age after all he's done.
For Scorcese's gangster/crime type of movies, I would place this above the Departed, about on par with Goodfellas (though it's its own separate thing). It is actually slightly better than Goodfellas in "some" ways, but I think Goodfellas is such a classic and broke new ground in such an original way that it is hard to declare it totally better than that. I will say this- I liked the ending of The Irishman more than I liked the final act and ending of Goodfellas. It's more powerful than you'll expect and hits pretty hard unexpectedly for such a dark comedy.
If it was between this and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, this is hands down your Best Picture winner for 2019. You may just want to skip that roughly half an hour around the 1:50-2:16 mark to save some time.
9/10