A strong "10". STRONG "10". (Warning: Not for Millenials)s)

Rating: 10/10 (20 December 2019)

There is no director in all of cinema who can so accurately and realistically describe the era of American mobster better than Martin Scorsese. This we already well know.
"The Irishman" is a tour de force in character study. Patiently directed ( and too slow for Millenials), it is so richly layered, you spend as much time reading the minds of the actors as you do watching the artfully framed scenes and listening to the stunningly honest and very realistic dialog. Others will certainly review this movie better than I but so am writing here today with a concern.
There was something so terribly sad about having the royalty of cinema portraying characters in their "sunset" years. Something disturbing. Scorsese lives through his characters and I didn't like what he was saying about himself. He made this film for the generation that remembered it all. Those of us who lived through the Kennedy's assassination, Castro's Cuba and even Battista, The Cuban Missile Crisis and of course, the question of just what the hell actually happened to Jimmy Hoffa. Scorsese doesn't care that Millenials need Google to look up all this stuff. He made this film almost like it was his last and for the audience who remembers. But as I said, this disturbs me. In "The Irishman", he no longer wrestles with the morality of it all, like he wrestles with the mysteries of his Catholicism. In this film, he seems to say that he's done with it. There's a finality here that worries me, as Scorcese is a National Treasure and I do hope that he continues to direct films that continue to define who we once were and who we are as a culture.
As someone has previously stated, this is NOT a film for the generation brought up on Star Wars, The Marvel Universe, Scarface violence or 140 characters. It's also not a film for young people who apparently HATE older people. ( The Agism in the reviews herr neglect the fact that they too may get old).
But here, Nobody does this kind of film better than Martin Scorcese.