Boring and miscast

Rating: 5/10 (8 October 2019)

De Niro and Pacino together again! Yay! Except, not so much. De Niro is OK, but Pacino is a disaster as Jimmy Hoffa. All I can hear when he speaks is his schlock performance from Scent of a Woman. Sometimes it helps to cast a less culturally ubiquitous actor, so that the character can outshine the performer. The real joy in this slog is Joe Pesci, who is terrific playing a very different kind of person than you're used to with him. So glad he came out of retirement for it. The CGI aging and de-aging is remarkable, but what would have been really good was to cast actors aged appropriately for their younger days, and age them with makeup. Sure, it's not the De Niro/Pacino star power, but it would have been a much better movie.
The Irishman is dragged down by stunt casting. And, I predict that it won't help at the box office. There just isn't as much interest anymore in a De Niro/Pacino pairing as there was a quarter-century ago, when Michael Mann snagged them for Heat.