The Irishman follows the life of Frank Sheeran, an Irishman from Philly who has a job transporting meat after he comes back from WWII. He catches the eye of mob boss Russell Bufalino, played by a more subdued Joe Pesci, and Bufalino has him carry out some hits for him. From there, he gets the job of protecting union president Jimmy Hoffa, played by a not so subdued Al Pacino. As time goes on, the marriage between Hoffa and the mob isn't what it once was, and Sheeran needs to make a decision that will affect him the rest of his life.
Mitch gave this 3 and 1/2 stars on his site, and for me, I might deduct a half-star for De Niro's blue contacts. All I heard about was this technique they used to make him younger and how silly that was, but I didn't care too much about that--but look at those blue eyes! Lorenzo Lamas in Terminal Justice thought that looked weird. So everything I enjoyed, like the great scenes between Pacino and De Niro, or Pesci and De Niro, was like listening to a great speaker who has some spinach in his teeth or a snot in his nose--you can't stop focusing on the spinach or the snot. That doesn't mean I hated it, I'm still in the three-star range--okay, maybe 2 and 3/4? But focus on those blue contacts. If having blue eyes mattered that much, just cast William Katt and call it good.
One decision I made in doing this review is to stick with my standard 8 paragraph format, despite the length of the film. I felt like if we're going to consider this DTV, the fact that it's Martin Scorsese and over 3 and a 1/2 hours alone shouldn't warrant a bigger post; plus, because I felt like Daniels was more deserving of that 1000th post spotlight than Scorsese due to his years of work that we've covered on the site, to make this 10 paragraphs like I did for the 1000th post, I felt would have diminished some of honor I was giving Daniels in that post. All joking about the contacts aside, I did enjoy this overall, so the decision to go the standard length should in no way be an indication of how I felt about it.
I was trying to think of an American director I like more than Martin Scorsese. He has my favorite film of the 80s, Raging Bull, my second favorite of the 90s, Goodfellas, plus two of my favorites from the 70s, Taxi Driver and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. I was also trying to think, of all of his films that I've seen (and I haven't seen them all), which ones I really didn't like--I've heard Kundun was a miss for him, so that may be one, but I haven't seen it yet. Anyway, when I heard he was going straight to Netflix for this, I was both excited and disappointed. The reality is, everything he said about Marvel films taking over the industry, whether you agree with him or not, is real and not good. Go to Wikipedia and look at the number of studios and the diversity of film on the 1989 highest grossing films list, and compare it to 2019. Dead Poets Society makes the '89 list. Can you imagine a Dead Poets Society even being greenlit for a theatrical release now, let alone be a highest grossing movie for its year? And this is not like my Dolemite is My Name post, where I felt like that was a movie made through Netflix that the traditional studio system would have either rejected, or messed with so much it would have been unremarkable; here we have someone who might be our greatest living director making essentially a direct to video movie. It would like if Penguin dropped Kazuo Ishiguro because they could only make money with books like Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey, and he could only get his books released through Amazon KDP. We'd say it's a travesty if that happened, but Scorsese's stuck with Netflix, and we say "quit your whining about Marvel movies old man." How long until Tarantino joins him? The Coen Brothers?
Back when I did Wild Card posts on Fridays, I covered Righteous Kill, and called it something of a legends basketball game. This doesn't quite have that feel as far as De Niro, Pacino, and Pesci go, this feels more like them with Scorsese are getting the band back together for a reunion tour. And in this, I can see the things I loved in Goodfellas and Casino, plus the idea of adding Pacino into this mix is fantastic. On the other hand, I can't get away from that TV movie look that a lot of Netflix movies have. Maybe in that sense, this would have been better as a 4 or 5 part Netflix TV series, because at least then if it has the same film stock as a Lifetime "Wrong" of "Stalked By" movie, it's not as distracting. I think there were other things that I wish Scorsese had cleaned-up to not betray these stars and their age, like the scene where De Niro throws a grocer through a glass window and kicks him. Couldn't he have shot that with more close-ups of De Niro grunting, maybe bringing us back to him in Goodfellas stomping Frank Vincent? And ultimately, if we're watching this as a Rolling Stones reunion tour installment in Scorsese's great filmography, for me that works on that score, and I enjoyed myself.
Finally, look at that diner sign I circled in the screenshot. That is the sign to the Melrose Diner, very close to where I live here in South Philly. This is one of the advantages to living in Philly that I never enjoyed where I grew up in Maine, seeing places I've been to appear in movies like this. Now is this enough for me to give back the half-star I took away for De Niro's contacts? Not quite, but it's nice to see.
Right now you can stream this on Netflix, and that's it. I know they're released Stranger Things on DVD, so perhaps someday you'll be able to add this to your Scorsese collection if you have one. Usually I would say if it's on Netflix and you already have a subscription, what do you have to lose, but considering I say anything above 88 minutes is borrowed time, this movie makes a substantial ask. I did it in parts--joking with Ty from Comeuppance when I was diving back into it--and that did the trick for me. And so with this review, we wrap our five-movie 1000th post celebration. Thank you again to Mitch at the Video Vacuum for this pick, and for all the support you've shown the blog over the years; and thank you to everyone else, readers, fellow bloggers, podcast guests, publicists, actors, screenwriters, and directors, everyone who has supported this site over the past 13 years and 1000+ posts, and all the posts we have to go. We may not see another Scorsese flick on here, but I hope to see you all back for our future posts as we try to keep this train going. Also, if you're interested in more from Mitch, you can go to our "DTVC Book Review" page, listed on the left-hand side, for a list of his books and a link to his Amazon author page.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1302006
No comments:
Post a Comment