BEFORE: OK, so I wasn't intending to watch this film here, but it will work. I risk genre whiplash by following up "The Nut Job 2" with the latest Scorsese film, and I may be the only person in the world who would watch THIS film after THAT one, at least the only person who would choose to AND admit it, but I've said that before about other choices I've made. I was going to watch "Killers" here, with Katherine Heigl carrying over, but after that was going to come the film "Hustlers", which is on iTunes for $5.99 rental, but also available to me on an Academy screener, technically free. Only that film sort of disappeared from the pile in the office, which means someone else borrowed it, or it was left in another location - it may become available to me again on Tuesday, but that was too late for my plan. I could skip a day, but then I'd be behind.
A more elegant solution would be to move this film forward on the list - I had it in a De Niro block starting later this week, but I can make it work here, and watch the other De Niro films in a few days, the hole will close neatly around the space - I'll have to add one other film with Al Pacino to make the connection back to "Killers", and then I'll progress from there, and "Hustlers" moves down the list to Wednesday, which means I can pick up the DVD on Tuesday. Now I'll have to watch 32 films in January instead of 31 if I want to start the romance chain on time, but I think I can swing that, the animated DC superhero movies next are all pretty short, I'm sure I can double up somewhere.
The reason that I CAN move this one up is that TWO actors carry over from "The Nut Job 2", Bobby Cannavale and Sebastian Maniscalco. And the film I'd adding tomorrow is another mob crime film - there were also gangsters (bank robbers) in "The Nut Job", so it's not THAT much of a leap, right? I guess I'll find out. Plus this moves "The Irishman", with a running time of 3 1/2 hours, from a Thursday to the previous Saturday - that's much better for me because I can stay up later to finish it, and even if I fall asleep, I'll have lots of time on Sunday to finish it. It's just better scheduling this way.
THE PLOT: A mob hitman recalls his career, including his possible involvement with the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa.
AFTER: You know, I didn't write anything about going to see "Hamilton" on Broadway earlier this week - I meant to, because some of the themes tied in with the film "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story", which I'd watched earlier the same day. I meant to update that post, but didn't get around to it. But in all the hubbub over winning the ticket lottery, collecting the tickets, getting to the show on time, getting home late, and then bragging about it the next day, very little was said about the quality of the show. Finally one boss asked me, "How did you like the show?" and I could only think, "Does it matter?" I was sort of along for the ride, my wife is a big fan of the show, and she'd never seen it live, only via a bootleg DVD and from listening to the soundtrack many times on long car trips. So I got the tickets for her via the show's app (only they came too late to be a Christmas gift and too early to be a Valentine's Day gift, whatever...) and I had to be there, since they were in my name. It's only fair, she came to see "Star Wars: Episode IX" with me, and she's not that big of a fan, whereas I'm a "Star Wars" super-fan. To each his own, and you try to appreciate what your partner enjoys to, to the extent that you can.
But in both cases, does it matter what one person thinks of the film, or the play, if simply EVERYONE is raving about it, and it's doing enormous box office and let's face it, "Hamilton" is going to do just fine regardless of what I think of the performance, so does it even matter? People are similarly buzzing about "The Irishman", simply because it's Scorsese and De Niro, plus Pacino and Pesci, and all of those people have such great track records that everyone simply HAS to see this before awards season, and it's probably going to get nominations (or at least be considered for them) on those track records alone. So whether I enjoyed watching this film is almost irrelevant. Almost.
Two major problems here, and the first one is the length. As I stated in the intro, it's just under three and a half-hours long. Thank God for the pause function on Netflix, if I were in a theater I think I'd have to sneak in a bathroom break somewhere in the middle. No movie should be that long, unless it's "Ben-Hur" or "Gone With the Wind" or something that tells the whole story of Western civilization in something close to real time. I'm automatically wondering whether this should have been a mini-series instead, or split into two movies like "Kill Bill" was, because as is, it's asking for a pretty big chunk of my weekend (and again, this is WHY I moved it to a weekend, I can't be still watching a film at 4 am and make it to work the next day...). I made sure to start the film at 11:15 on Saturday night, so I'd be finished with time to do a couple tasks before feeding the cats breakfast and then turning in. But considering how Netflix tries to turn everything into a series, I'm shocked that this project didn't end up going that route.
The other major problem, for me, is the film's structure, since it jumps around in time and that's my least favorite "hot trend" of the last few years. (I know, it's been around longer than that, but it's really taken off in the past decade.). Nobody seems to be able to stop this trend - is anyone trying? - and now it's infected Scorsese, too. I might be able to forgive a non-linear narrative if it helped to make a long, boring film a little less boring, but here the technique had no discernable impact on the running time - it's STILL three and half hours long! So that's three and a half hours of skipping through this mobster's life, Billy Pilgrim-style, only there are no aliens at the end that might have gotten him unstuck in time - it's just the rambling, random way that a really old guy might tell a story.
Speaking of which, there's at least one framing device too many being utilized. The whole thing is told by the very old Frank Sheeran to...well, someone. We don't know until the end who he's been relating his story to, perhaps nobody specific and he's just rambling on at the nursing home to anyone and everyone during communal TV hour. "Shaddup, ya crazy old fart, we're trying to watch Wheel of Fortune!" But as he relates the story of a road-trip he took to Detroit with Russell Bufalino and their wives to a wedding, with business stops and smoke breaks along the way, the first smoke break is at a rest stop that just happens to be where Frank and Russell met years ago, so the road-trip serves as ANOTHER framing device, and triggers a flashback-within-a-flashback, which should be verboten where narratives are concerned. Really, Marty, is that what they taught you in film school, to put one flashback inside another? You should know better - that's a no-no.
I'm willing to bet that if this story had started at the beginning, and ended at the end, following a linear narrative, the story could have been edited down to, well, let's say two and a half hours, instead of three and a half. Jumping around in time causes the need for repeating some scenes and also over-explaining where we are in the timeline RIGHT NOW, and if Scorsese had stuck to one timeline, there would have been less need to keep doing that. Just putting that out there.
No doubt you've heard about this film because of the "de-aging" techniques that were used on De Niro and Pesci so they could play younger versions of the same characters, instead of casting other actors who would then have to (essentially) do impressions of them, learn to walk and talk like the older actors, assuming you could even FIND younger actors with enough of a resemblance to pull this off. So I understand why the de-aging computer effects are important - but once I know they're being used, I can't help but LOOK for them, so in every new shot, I'm thinking "Is this a shot where they de-aged De Niro? Well, his face does look a bit odd in this one, so probably." Essentially it solves one problem, but creates another, because for people like me who also went to film school, we can't really "turn off" that part of our brain that wants to figure out how a shot was made. (I couldn't watch "Birdman" either, for example, without watching to see if I could spot the breaks in the so-called continuous shots.).
I wish that the de-aging technique - also used in "Guardians of the Galaxy 2" on Kurt Russell, in "Ant-Man and the Wasp" on Laurence Fishburne and in "Rogue One" on Carrie Fisher (though I think all of those films used stand-ins mixed with CGI) - could be at a stage where it's more accepted, and doesn't become the focus of the conversation about a film, but we're not there yet. It's like the "talking animal" animation used in films like "Zookeeper" and the Eddie Murphy "Doctor Dolittle" films, it became so prevalent that by the time "The Lion King" remake and the new "Doctor Dolittle" film with Robert Downey Jr. come out, it barely makes the news - by now it's just another technique that's being used to tell a story. De-aging is still so new that it diverts attention away from the narrative, and right now, that's still a big hiccup, if you ask me.
Frank Sheeran becomes sort of the "Forrest Gump" of mob action, whenever anything important happens, he seems to somehow be there and involved. After a certain point, can this even be believable? Was he always somehow involved in these headline-making events, or is a large part of this fictionalized? That truck that he delivered down to Florida, without knowing the contents - we're supposed to connect the dots and assume that somehow it was weapons and supplies related to the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba? Can I see some paperwork on this? Then to a lesser extent, we're shown the JFK and RFK assassinations taking place, and somehow the same mobsters seem to have a hand in everything, come on...
Then of course, the last half of this film concerns Jimmy Hoffa, and Frank's time spent with him as a de facto bodyguard, confidante and trusted friend. The interplay between Pacino (as Hoffa) and De Niro is probably the best thing about the movie, IMHO, and seeing these two working together again trumps getting De Niro and Pesci back together again, if you ask me. But perhaps you tuned in because you're dying to know what happened to Hoffa - is he buried under Giants Stadium, or sleeping with the fishes? Well, there's an answer here, but who's to say if it's correct? In some ways, it's the easiest answer, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's the BEST answer. Again, I'd like to see some paperwork on this.
I've got to call a NITPICK POINT on the fact that this film takes place all over, from Florida to Detroit to Washington, DC - maybe Jimmy Hoffa really got around, because the Teamsters Union was nationwide. But aren't most mobsters local and territorial? Frank Sheeran was part of the North Philly mob, does it track that he was front and center for every important mob moment, from Little Italy to Miami? Again, it's about as believable as Forrest Gump running across the U.S. several times. Closer to home (for me), the shooting locations included Yonkers, White Plains, several places in New Jersey, and places I've been like Tuxedo, NY (there's a cool RenFaire there every fall), a couple towns on Long Island (makes sense, you can still find downtown areas out there that haven't changed since the 1970's), and a Catholic Church in my neighborhood in Queens - I wouldn't know it, I don't patronize churches any more. Plus there's the Clinton Diner in Maspeth, which appears in a lot of movies like "Going in Style" but is best known as the "Goodfellas Diner". I've eaten there twice, the food wasn't that great, and we drive past it all the time. Yelp lists it as permanently closed, so I'm thinking that it only exists now as a backdrop for Scorsese films and other movies and TV shows, it's basically a permanent set-piece now, shuttered most of the time unless a production needs a diner, and then they probably have to bring in food from a catering company.
Last October, while on vacation, we visited the Mob Museum outside of Vegas - and as you might expect, there were displays on things like the JFK assassination, the Lindbergh kidnapping, and the St. Valentine's Day massacre - somehow they had the bullet-hole riddled wall from that shooting, which was moved to Vegas from Chicago and rebuilt, brick by brick. But then there was a giant display with photos of all the famous gangsters, from Al Capone, Bugsy Siegel and John Gotti down to "Crazy" Joe Gallo, Vincent "The Chin" Gigante and "Big Paul" Castellano. It's hard not to take that as a sort of "Hall of Fame", one that glorifies mob figures, and therefore sort of legitimizes it, and I think that's kind of dangerous.
It's a bit ironic that Scorsese publicly railed against films like "Avengers: Endgame", saying that superhero movies aren't valid entertainment - ironic because I can sort of see the similarities between this film and "Endgame". Both were too long and could have benefited from some editing, and both involved time travel, the Avengers just did it literally and "The Irishman" bounced around narratively within Sheeran's life story. And at the end of both films, I was left exhausted and more than a little bit confused, wondering if I'd just witnessed the ultimate film ever made in the genre, or an incredible pile of nonsense on top of nonsense. Sorry, Marty, just keeping it real.
So in the end, is this Scorsese's masterwork or just a bloated pile of nonsense? Time will tell, and I'll be paying attention during awards season to see which way the popular opinion goes on this, but as always, your mileage may vary. For me personally, this made me want to re-watch "Casino", which I think will ultimately prove to be Scorsese's best film. Either that or "Goodfellas". Wait, maybe "The Departed". Discuss. But in some ways we're in a more enlightened time now, the mob films of yesteryear, with all their stereotypes, have morphed into more palatable thinkpieces like "Green Book", which did very well, and it just seems like maybe Scorsese didn't get the memo on this.
Also starring Robert De Niro (last seen in "Trespassing Bergman"), Al Pacino (last seen in "Frankie and Johnny"), Joe Pesci (last seen in "Life Itself"), Ray Romano (last seen in "The Big Sick"), Harvey Keitel (last heard in "Isle of Dogs"), Anna Paquin (last seen in "The Squid and the Whale"), Stephen Graham (last seen in "Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool"), Stephanie Kurtzuba (last seen in "The Wolf of Wall Street"), Bo Dietl (ditto), Kathrine Narducci (last seen in "Jersey Boys"), Jeremy Luke (ditto), Welker White (last seen in "Eat Pray Love"), Jesse Plemons (last seen in "Vice"), Jack Huston (last seen in "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"), Domenick Lombardozzi (last seen in "God's Pocket"), Paul Herman (last seen in "Joy"), Barry Primus (ditto), Dascha Polanco (ditto), Louis Cancelmi, Gary Basaraba (last seen in "Suburbicon"), Marin Ireland (last seen in "The Family Fang"), Aleksa Palladino (last seen in "Mona Lisa Smile"), John Scurti (ditto), Kevin O'Rourke (last seen in "Riding in Cars With Boys"), J.C. MacKenzie (last seen in "Molly's Game"), Larry Romano (last seen in "The Thin Red Line"), Joseph Bono, Craig Vincent, Louis Vanaria, Jennifer Mudge, Kate Arrington, Garry Pastore (last seen in "The Week Of"), Steve Witting, Stephen Mailer (last seen in "The Post"), Al Linea, Daniel Jenkins (last seen in "Cradle Will Rock"), Paul Ben-Victor (last seen in "Don Jon"), Patrick Gallo, Jake Hoffman, Ken Clark, Peter Jay Fernandez, Jeff Moore, Gino Cafarelli, Robert Funaro (last seen in "Not Fade Away"), Action Bronson (last seen in "Game Over, Man!"), Vinny Vella (last seen in "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai"), Matt Walton, Lucy Gallina, India Ennenga, Tess Price, Jordyn DiNatale, Anthony J. Gallo, Jonathan Morris, with cameos from Jim Norton (last seen in "Top Five"), Steven Van Zandt, archive footage of John F. Kennedy (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), Jacqueline Kennedy (ditto), Fidel Castro, and (I believe) the voice of Walter Cronkite (last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone")
RATING: 7 out of 10 guys named Tony
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