Review: The Irishman

Image courtesy of Netflix.

Martin Scorsese's final word on the mob genre is more of a funereal affair than one might expect from the director of such vivacious gangster classics as "Goodfellas" and "Casino." While the director's three-and-a-half-hour opus bears some stylistic resemblances to those previous films, it also focuses on regret and mortality, and in doing so reminded me of Sergio Leone's long and fragmented - albeit brilliant - "Once Upon a Time in America."

The film opens with a long winding tracking shot - the type employed in "Goodfellas" - through a nursing home in the early 2000s, where we find an aging man named Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro in his best performance in ages) sitting in a wheel chair. The song "In the Still of the Night" plays on the soundtrack, and it will act as a motif in the picture. Frank begins narrating his story - first as voice over, then out loud - and it's a doozy of a tale that spans from World War II to the early 21st century and includes the Bay of Pigs, the JFK assassination, the famed Umberto's mob hit in Little Italy and the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa (portrayed by a wily Al Pacino).

Frank claims to have some involvement in each of these historic milestones, although we get the impression that he's possibly an unreliable narrator. Indeed, some have questioned the veracity of Sheeran's claims in the book "I Heard You Paint Houses" by Charles Brandt, to whom Sheeran told his story, but "The Irishman" isn't as concerned with the historical record as it is this particular character's portrayal of it, and how it comes to haunt him as he withers away into old age.

For a movie obsessed with death, sin and regret, "The Irishman" is often one of Scorsese's funnier movies, from an ongoing joke involving Frank and Philadelphia crime boss Russell Bufalino's (a fantastic Joe Pesci) wives wanting to pull over to have a smoke during a road trip to a scene in which a mobster (Bobby Cannavale) catches a lower level crook in a lie regarding his mother's death. Also, Frank - who was involved in numerous murders and frequent violent behavior - relays the story with a cheerful tone, that is, at least for the film's first two-thirds.

Anna Paquin has a bit role as Peggy, one of Frank's four daughters, and much has been made over the fact that she has so few lines in the film. Her character, described as a shy girl, acts somewhat as a witness to Frank's behavior. Early in the movie, she's shoved by a grocer and her father responds in an extreme manner. Later, as his crimes become more violent and he sneaks out of his house in the night to perform them, it is often Peggy there watching on the staircase. She might not know exactly what he's up to, but she knows it's something wrong.

Frank's parenting is one of two things that haunt him during the film's final 30 minutes, in which we see him estranged from his family, picking out a coffin and trying, but failing, to express remorse while talking to a priest. The other thing that plagues his soul is the disappearance of Hoffa, to whom Frank was a right-hand man and good friend.

The relationships between two sets of men - Frank and Russell, who acts as a father figure to Sheeran, and Frank and Hoffa, who often share hotel rooms together when traveling to visit local union chapters - is often the heart of the movie. During one hotel stay, Frank notices that Hoffa likes to keep his bedroom door slightly ajar when he sleeps at night. That shot bookends the film, but in the second instance looking in on a room inhabited by an ailing Frank. There's a world of meaning to be read into it.

Scorsese is arguably the greatest living filmmaker, and "The Irishman" feels like a retrospective of his work - while at the same time having a tone that's different from his previous mob movies. Stylistically, the picture owes as much to his recent "Silence" as it does "Goodfellas." It also employs another trait that might have seemed like an indulgence with another director, but works well in adding to the somber atmosphere: when a number of mob figures are introduced, text appears on the screen next to them indicating the date and manner in which they were killed, and most of the time it's not by natural causes.

And oddly enough, "The Irishman" reminded me of David Lynch's fabulous "Twin Peaks: The Return" in some ways. That film also used an oldies ballad - "My Prayer" - to act as a motif that tied together pivotal scenes, while also driving home the fact that while you can look back on the glory days, you can never quite recover them. Much like Lynch's work, Scorsese's latest doesn't have the youthful, exciting vibe of "Goodfellas," but rather a mournful looking back by an old man on a turbulent life full of regrets.

This is one of the year's best movies, and it's the type that you need at least two viewings to fully grasp. At age 77, Scorsese might be winding down the genre with which he has long been associated, but "The Irishman" isn't just a greatest hits package. Instead, it's a powerhouse movie that observes a man who, by the nature of his work, shouldn't have lived as long as he did, and his punishment is to live with the ghosts that he helped to create.