The Irishman (2019)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Pennsylvania, 1956. Frank Sheeran, a war veteran of Irish origin who works as a truck driver, accidentally meets mobster Russell Bufalino. Once Frank becomes his trusted man, Bufalino sends him to Chicago with the task of helping Jimmy Hoffa, a powerful union leader related to organized crime, with whom Frank will maintain a close friendship for nearly twenty years.
73 connections found
View:
73 films that influenced The Irishman
What critics say influenced The Irishman
The makeup of this story — a truck driver turned hit man named Frank Sheeran tells of his friendships with Mafia kingpins and his role in the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa — includes elements of the kinetic energy of “Mean Streets” and "Goodfellas" and the epic, going-to-hell tapestry of “Casino.”
De Niro had admired Scorsese’s 1967 debut, Who’s That Knocking At My Door, finding it to be an authentic representation of life in their neighbourhood, and when the director returned to that territory in 1973 with Mean Streets, he cast De Niro as the impish troublemaker Johnny Boy.
Returning to the working class perspective he favored in Mean Streets, the film offers a grittier take of life in the rackets than his more recent efforts, but all the themes are still there: loyalty, brotherhood, guilt, and the how much harder it is to rationalize our actions as we get older.
From Mean Streets to Goodfellas to Casino, no filmmaker has become as associated with the gangster movie genre as we know it today.
In his latest, The Irishman, Scorsese takes all the best elements from his filmography — including Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Casino, The Departed and The Wolf of Wall Street — and tosses them into a three-and-a-half-hour character-driven epic.
In Mean Streets, released when Scorsese was 31, a brush with danger, a life-altering event with an ultimate outcome still unwritten.
Director Martin Scorsese hasn’t collaborated with De Niro since Casino (1995), and for some reason, he’s never worked with Al Pacino before.
The mournful epic caps a mob-based quartet of films preceded by Mean Streets, GoodFellas and Casino.
Since Taxi Driver, director Martin Scorsese goes way back with actor Robert De Niro, but the director has also made a career of famed mafia movies from Goodfellas to Casino.
It’s Scorese’s “Unforgiven,” a Catholic’s atonement for all the gilded Oscar glory that was a byproduct of his decades of gangland epics, from “Goodfellas” and “Casino” to “The Departed.”
Scorsese loves a good requiem, whether it be for the Wise Guy high life in Goodfellas, the days of mob-controlled Vegas in Casino, or for the salad days of organized labor in The Irishman.
Voici un nouveau chef-d’œuvre de Martin Scorsese, un autre captivant film de gangsters épique dans la lignée de GoodFellas et Casino, sur fond d’histoire du XXe siècle (JFK, Castro, Nixon, etc.), mais aussi un bouleversant film sur le vieillissement et la mort, avec possiblement la meilleure performance en carrière de Robert De Niro, aux côtés d’Al Pacino et Joe Pesci, eux aussi extraordinaires.
Forget the famous, triumphant Copacabana tracking shot in Scorsese’s GoodFellas — this is the cold, bleak truth of a cold, bleak life.
Since Taxi Driver, director Martin Scorsese goes way back with actor Robert De Niro, but the director has also made a career of famed mafia movies from Goodfellas to Casino.
The story follows Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), and Scorsese revisits the narration used in several of his films, but this isn’t Goodfellas.
The creative force behind films like “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” “Goodfellas” – films that are indelible parts of the cinematic pantheon.
It’s Scorese’s “Unforgiven,” a Catholic’s atonement for all the gilded Oscar glory that was a byproduct of his decades of gangland epics, from “Goodfellas” and “Casino” to “The Departed.”
Scorsese loves a good requiem, whether it be for the Wise Guy high life in Goodfellas, the days of mob-controlled Vegas in Casino, or for the salad days of organized labor in The Irishman.
It’s Scorese’s “Unforgiven,” a Catholic’s atonement for all the gilded Oscar glory that was a byproduct of his decades of gangland epics, from “Goodfellas” and “Casino” to “The Departed.”
Think Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" with a change in setting, rewritten by an altar boy who has seen things.
Like Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven in 1992, Martin Scorsese’s Irishman revises and demystifies the myths that made—and still entertain—America.
Coming as late in their careers as it is, there’s a temptation to say this is their final statement on the genre, a commentary that helps put their respective careers in context, much like Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven.”
Scorsese’s three-and-a-half-hour magnum opus — which reunites him with longtime collaborators Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci for the first time since 1995’s “Casino” — is a gangster movie to end all gangster movies, akin to Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven” and John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” in that it finds a filmmaker reflecting on the genre he helped define, issuing what feels like his final word on the subject.
Clint Eastwood bid adieu to westerns with “Unforgiven,” a movie deconstructing what violence does to the soul.
Advertisement
Scorsese’s three-and-a-half-hour magnum opus — which reunites him with longtime collaborators Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci for the first time since 1995’s “Casino” — is a gangster movie to end all gangster movies, akin to Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven” and John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” in that it finds a filmmaker reflecting on the genre he helped define, issuing what feels like his final word on the subject.
Bostonian film critic Sean Burns is the first I’ve seen that compared “The Irishman” to “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” in his review that espoused that Scorsese’s “The Irishman is the movie to end all gangster movies.”
When Paquin is introduced, in a mostly dialogue-free role, the two rarely share the same frame, with a particular moment finding Paquin atop a staircase, in a scene reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, seemingly letting go of the idea of ever having a relationship with her father.
I couldn’t help thinking of Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky as at least an inspiration, if not a tighter expression of these ideas.
A sadder and bedraggled “Mikey and Nicky”—why so existential?—Martin…
But much like Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, The Irishman deals with themes Orson Welles tapped in his 1958 masterpiece Touch of Evil: that in order to get at some profound truth — about the meaning of life or the passage of time — sometimes an artist has to tell a few lies.
Advertisement
From character-based psychological thrillers ( Taxi Driver , Cape Fear ) to bombastic biopics of eccentric moguls ( The Aviator , The Wolf of Wall Street ) to Daniel-Day Lewis costume dramas ( Gangs of New York , The Age of Innocence ) to deeply meditative religious pieces ( Silence , The Last Temptation of Christ ), Scorsese is continually flexing his storytelling prowess.
Yet there are also nods to Taxi Driver , The Age of Innocence , and even Silence in the film’s determined focus of an end-of-life meditation on the inevitability of death.
So he tried a period drama with "The Age of Innocence;" a biopic with "The Aviator;" and an homage to cinema with "Hugo."
This film shares a hallmark of Scorsese’s gangster films like Goodfellas , Casino , and The Age of Innocence (which is totally a gangster film) in people who insistently talk around the subject that they’re addressing, partly because they’re afraid of government wiretaps and partly to shield themselves from their business’ grubby realities.
Of his more recent works, “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013) registered a bravura take on a tired genre, and folks always tend to forget the quiet, immersive charm of “The Age of Innocence” (1993).
It’s as much a companion piece to the propulsive, addictive violence of Goodfellas and Casino as it is to the meditative lacerations of Silence, the punishing doubts of The Last Temptation of Christ and the spiritual suffering of The Age of Innocence.
Pacino doesn’t achieve the same kind of physical verisimilitude Jack Nicholson had in 1992’s “Hoffa,” but he creates a memorable portrayal of a charismatic, short-fused, two-fisted union leader whose refusal to quit or back down fueled his rise to power — and led to his downfall.
That Boston film, “The Departed” (2006), played with the persona of Whitey, with Jack Nicholson (who played Hoffa in Danny DeVito’s 1992 take, “Hoffa”) painting him as, well, Jack Nicholson (i.e., not very Boston or Bulger-esque).
It’s instructive to compare Pacino’s Hoffa with Jack Nicholson’s, in the underrated “Hoffa” (1992).
Danny DeVito’s Hoffa had Jack Nicholson playing the Teamster boss as something of a brutal thug, but Pacino manages to make Hoffa a surprisingly charming guy, almost grandfatherly.
Além disso, Pacino torna Hoffa uma figura calorosa e que desperta o afeto do espectador, o que adiciona um elemento dramático importante à narrativa (algo que faltava, por exemplo, à versão de Jack Nicholson no mediano Hoffa ).
He’s more subtle than Jack Nicholson’s incendiary version in Danny DeVito’s underrated 1992 “Hoffa.”