In the Irishman legendary director Martin Scorsese returns to a mob story for the first time in years. Robert De Niro plays Frank Sheeran, a union driver who ends up getting involved with the mafia and with Union leader Jimmy Hoffa (played here by Al Pacino). Joe Pesci plays the mafia leader Russell Bufalino who Frank works for. Frank moves up in the mob and also moves up in the union, eventually becoming Hoffa’s right-hand man. As Hoffa and the mafia start to clash more and more Frank is constantly caught between. He tries to make peace until Hoffa’s disappearance (which the movie portrays from Frank’s point of view).
There are obvious shades of Goodfellas, Casino, and the Departed. And even shades of other mob films like the Godfather and Once Upon a Time in America. But this movie doesn’t grab you the way Scorsese’s earlier work did. And it doesn’t have the epic scale of those other movies.
The cast is loaded with heavy hitters, even beyond Pesci, Pacino, and De Niro. But no performance matches any of the actors’ career highs.
This movie is as much about aging and the inevitably of death as it is about Hoffa’s clash with the mob. Things happen whether we want them to or not, we all grow old whether we want to or not, and we all die whether we want to or not.
The movie conveys those themes fine. But I felt aged after watching this movie. As sacrilegious as this sounds it was kind of too long and too boring.