After exploring other genres and stories for over a decade, Martin Scorsese went back to gangster films with The Irishman, and it’s a triumphant return as it’s getting great reviews - although some viewers find it boring. The Irishman reunited Scorsese with frequent collaborators Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Harvey Keitel, who have starred in some of his most memorable films from the crime genre, such as Mean Streets, Goodfellas, and Casino. The film also marks the first collaboration between Scorsese and Al Pacino after a long, long wait of nearly 50 years.
The Irishman, based on Charles Brandt’s book I Heard You Paint Houses, follows Frank Sheeran (De Niro), a truck driver who gets involved with Russell Bufalino (Pesci) and his Pennsylvania crime family and becomes his top hit man. Sheeran later begins to work for Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino), a powerful Teamster linked to organized crime. The Irishman was one of the most anticipated releases of the year, and so far it hasn’t disappointed fans and critics.
With The Irishman on Netflix, there have been some more negative takes on the movie. While its audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is still a respectable 86%, there does seem to be a greater audience consensus since its streaming debut that the movie is boring. For example, if you search for The Irishman on Twitter, the first suggestion is "The Irishman boring". The film's mammoth runtime doesn't help in this regard; it's a slow, thoughtful, and reflective work, which isn't necessarily as well suited to living rooms and laptops as it is the cinema. There isn't a huge amount of action, but instead lots of dialogue scenes and introspection. On the flip side, however, The Irishman currently holds a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes among critics. This score is the same as one of Scorsese’s finest crime films, Goodfellas, and is just 1% lower than Taxi Driver. Here’s what critics are saying about The Irishman:
Time:
For the first two and a half hours of its three-and-a-half-hour runtime, The Irishman is clever and entertaining, to the point where you may think that’s all it’s going to be. But its last half-hour is deeply moving in a way that creeps up on you, and it’s then that you see what Scorsese was working toward all along: A mini-history of late-20th century America as filtered through the eyes of a smalltime guy who needs and wants to believe in his own importance and capacity for decency—and who can’t see, though Scorsese can, that it’s the end of a life that tells the truth about the middle.
"The Irishman” presents mob life as a far more solemnly unromantic and toll-taking experience. A film of masterly hushed precision, it digs deep into the nub of its subject, which is the dark heart of power.
There’s humour, plenty of it, but rather than watching men commit crimes to pay for extravagant luxuries, we see them do it for their family’s survival, or at least that’s how they might justify it. And it’s in this introspection where the film gets really interesting. When a director returns to a genre they’re most associated with, it can often feel like a greatest hits montage. For much of its duration, The Irishman covers familiar ground but is slickly entertaining, if a little repetitive in the third hour. [...] There’s an almost meta-maturity, as if Scorsese is also looking back on his own career, the film leaving us with a haunting reminder not to glamorise violent men and the wreckage they leave behind.
Five decades is a lot of history to hold together, and it could have easily crumbled. But Scorsese is at the top of his game here. His film is never boring, and it explores some unexpectedly deep themes for mafiosos.
“The Irishman" is Martin Scorsese’s best crime movie since “Goodfellas,” and a pure, unbridled illustration of what has made his filmmaking voice so distinctive for nearly 50 years. Forget that it’s a touch too long and the much-ballyhooed de-aging technology doesn’t always cast a perfect spell; the movie zips along at such a satisfying clip that its flaws rarely amount to more than mild speed bumps along the way.
Many of The Irishman's reviews praise the performances of the main cast and called it one of Scorsese’s masterpieces. Most critics are praising Robert De Niro’s role, with many calling it his best in years, as well as Joe Pesci’s. Of course, the story is another one of the most critically acclaimed elements from The Irishman, as it features multi-layered characters and doesn’t try to romanticize mob life at all, but instead making a meditative piece on what a life of crime leaves behind, making the film’s runtime worth it. However, like some views, not every critic was pleased with how The Irishman used those three and a half hours. Here are opinions from critics that weren’t entirely pleased with the film.
Despite the movie's many pleasures and Scorsese's redoubtable directorial finesse, the excessive length ultimately is a weakness. Attempts to build in social context during the Kennedy and Nixon years, at times intercutting news footage from the period, aren't substantial enough to add much in terms of texture. The connections drawn between politics and organized crime feel undernourished, and the movie works best when it remains tightly focused on the three central figures of Frank, Russell and Jimmy.
"The Irishman" runs three and a half hours, and though some of its sidebars are interesting (notably, a section about how the mob got John F. Kennedy elected president by stuffing ballot boxes in Illinois), it could easily be trimmed by 30 minutes or more by tightening up the midsection. Failing that, a lot of viewers who see it on Netflix, on which it debuts November 27, are going to fall asleep in the middle.
Some critics found The Irishman's runtime to be a weakness, and that some parts were so undeveloped (particularly the mob/politics connections) that they could have been easily left on the cutting room floor. Others felt the third act was too slow and that some parts needed to be explored more. Aside from its length and use of de-aging technology (which was bound to be criticized, even if it’s not as bad as other recent examples), the most important elements from The Irishman (that is: story, performances, and photography) have been praised by critics. Martin Scorsese can brag about his successful return to mob films with the help of some of the best actors from the genre (and cinema in general), even if some people are not completely sold on having to sit down and watch for over three hours.