Yet another classic movie from Martin Scorsese, the greatest to ever do it has done it again. An amazing story combined with an absolute stellar cast which includes standout performances from Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci just to name a few. The Irishman isn't your typical gangster flick, it reflects more so on morality and human nature with a somewhat somber yet honest effort that ultimately culminates in the telling of a characters life and the choices they made.
Film The Irishman | Martin Scorsese | 2019
- Thread starter Hoof the ball
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Amazing story. I remember how big Tony Pro was around where I live. The movie really is a great history lesson
I really liked this movie. It's in the same class as Goodfellas. The acting is top-notch. It goes to show De Niro can still bring his A-game when he wants.
That's what you took from the film ?I’m watching it right now. The grocery store beating was absolutely laughable. It was like a spoof action movie. Some Austin Powers shit. What the feck have I just seen?Embarrassingly awful scene.
That was just where I was at the time. Posted while watching. Tbh I fell asleep a couple of times. The film was okay but I don’t really feel like there’s anything fresh in the genre. I thought it was a bit boring. Well made, but not my cup of tea.
He would've been him up with his shins
I just finished watching it. And while it's objectively well made, directed and acted, and an interesting watch, I also simulatously found it highly underwhelming. I understand that it runs you thought the lives of these people's whose actions impacted one another and is based on real life events, but it's just got so little in terms of punch, that I tended to be watching the film as opposed to being engaged by it. And while Pacino especially and Pesci were great to watch, De Niro was completely one note. He makes that bemused/well what can ya do face about half of the time. He's like a vacuum of personality. It even ended with a whimper.
Get a feeling it's recieving acclaim purely due to who is in the movie and who made it.
Get a feeling it's recieving acclaim purely due to who is in the movie and who made it.
I'm Robert De Nero, and welcome to Jackassfellas
Yeah it's interesting. I'm reading about how the film is about consequences and morality. And other than his daughter ghosting him, Frank waltz through life and his actions like a happy chappy. What was the consequence for all of them? They grew old and died. Together. How terrible.
I'm being harsh on the film. It was well done. But I'm a little bemused by the masterpiece reaction.
Hang on, he grew old and alone without anyone to care for him, after having killed his best friend and watch others he knew end their lives in jail.
I think this is a response to the people who watch wolf of Wall Street and think “What a life”.These films were never intended to idolise these people. I think this is a film that shows the horrors of what they have done.
The lack of screen time for the women was purposeful. He’s the narrator of this story so we don’t hear much. The only time he takes an interest in his daughters is when they briefly impact on his gangster story. He takes his daughter to watch him batter a man because he thinks that is the type of thing you do to impress someone. He speaks about killing people in front of their children so “they’ll learn”.
If the consequences are indeed strong, then they weren't conveyed very well IMO. De Niro just came across as an emotionally stunted individual. He was playing "gangster 275".
The writing at times was great though. The interactions between Pacino and Pro were gold. "It's summer".
He dies alone in a nice nursing home a) because he outlived his mobster pals, who died of natural causes and b) because he's emotionally crippled and didn't care about his family. Both have little to do with being a mob fixer. It's not as clearly glorified or romanticized as in some other movies, but I don't see the karmic justice at work there. Had he stayed an honest meat driver he could (perhaps would) have ended up just as old and alone, but a lot poorer.
And how broken up is he really about Hoffa? The story makes a point about that when it has the FBI agents plead to him to tell them about Hoffa's fate for his family's sake.
If the point of the movie was to show the "horrors" of mob life it made a terrible job of conveying it.
Why does it have to be extreme to convey a point? It's not so much the horrors, more the void-ness it ultimately brought to his life. He's an empty shell of a man by the time the film ends, and the last 30mns of the film are pretty harrowing, without having to hammer the point home. The scene of the guys playing bocce ball (I think) in wheelchairs in the cold prison yard was as hard hitting, for me, as Al Pacino howling in pain on the opera steps at the end of Godfather 3.
I also don’t think all his mates died of old age. The whole film is showing you how so many people involved died in horrific and violent attacks through the film.
Plus his nurse at the end has no idea who Jimmy Hoffa is.
His entire life and all the business dealings, it's not even remembered anymore, it's like it's all been a waste of time.
Well because dying from old age and getting senile/infirm is not connected to being a gangster. A lot of people probably experience the same void at the end, despite never setting a foot wrong.
To me it just didn't feel like a "he brought this on himself" story.
Had he stayed a truck driver still would've been burtal and selfish. He started stealing and talked indifferently about killing, before he really got connected; when his lawyer asked him about whether he hit someone his answer is "on the job?".
Had he stayed out of OC he might not have been sitting in a cold prison yard with his pals, but for me odds are he would be sitting in a diaper in some understaffed nursing home for the poor.
And it doesn't have to be extreme, but e.g. when he doesn't give a shit about his family all movie long it's hard to care about his daughter ignoring him, let alone take it as some form of moral punishment.
Much like watching De Niro try to express emotions in this film
Agree with this and I felt the same while watching it.
I know certain people hold a quite ridiculous amount of weight in this forum but I have watched 63 minutes of this film and I don’t feel the graphics detract from it at all.
It's not about the karmic justice that will see all the mobsters die horrible deaths (although many of them did). It's about how everything that he did and held up dear turned into dust that no one even remembers about. All that tokens of respect, favours and status that he spent all of his life on aren't worth anything now.
I felt like this movie, like the last Tarantino flick, does get underappreciated because those are more of a cinematic experiences rather than traditional story-driven movies. It also helps immensely if you're in the context.
I felt like this movie, like the last Tarantino flick, does get underappreciated because those are more of a cinematic experiences rather than traditional story-driven movies. It also helps immensely if you're in the context.
Well, I sat trough the entire 3 and a half hour so I can't say it's bad. It's a good movie, but it's really nothing special, I just don't see what's so great about it.
The acting crew is great if you just look at the list, but if you didn't know who they are you would probably think it's some parody about some old grandpas on speed acting gangsters. I think from the main actors, only Al Pacino was fitting for his character and did a great job, De Niro's was just ridiculous. Their main man(De Niro) of action was moving like a penguin with back problems and I am supposed to take it seriously?
I doubt I'll watch it again, and I'll happily rewatch few times any other movie from similar genre from the 80s and 90s. It's a good story, I like the cast, the style, but really not worth the hype, as expected.
The acting crew is great if you just look at the list, but if you didn't know who they are you would probably think it's some parody about some old grandpas on speed acting gangsters. I think from the main actors, only Al Pacino was fitting for his character and did a great job, De Niro's was just ridiculous. Their main man(De Niro) of action was moving like a penguin with back problems and I am supposed to take it seriously?
I doubt I'll watch it again, and I'll happily rewatch few times any other movie from similar genre from the 80s and 90s. It's a good story, I like the cast, the style, but really not worth the hype, as expected.
I didn't think it was a great movie either. Re the acting Pacino was good, I though Pesci was the best of them though.
Watched the first 30 mins of this and it was ok but felt quite formulaic. Does it get better? I actually just started rewatching season 3 of the Sopranos after starting this
They stopping for cigarettes was the funniest part for me.
Yes. Push through i'd say. Took me a while to get into it but once Pacino is properly introduced and you start to get an idea where the movie is taking you, it got quite a lot better.
One hour too long for sure IMO. Movie could have been as immersive with tighter editing. A lot of sequences just screamed self indulgence on Scorsese's part. I see what it was going for but I don't rate it as highly as some of Scorsese's other movies. And yes, De Niro playing a hitman at a very old age going about killing people in broad daylight did not look very convincing to me.
Nah, more of the same. No surprises with plot or anything.
Sopranos has kind of killed any desire i have to watch mafia / organised crime movies or tv series. It was just too good nearly and after 6 seasons there wasn't really anywhere else to go. Doesn't help that Scorcese and Coppola have been there and made absolute classics of cinema too. Its just such a high bar to compete against and you need to make something really outstanding to hold my interest. This film didn't.
Not to mention they're just fecking grim a lot of the time and most of the characters are psychopaths, they're not the kind of film I'd watch as light entertainment.
There’s nothing really to like about Frank, he just kind of ends up in that life and position by default. We never really get an insight into why these wiseguys and corrupt officials took a shine to him and trusted him. I get that Scorsese’s subjects are always despicable people, but they normally have a bit of charisma and style about them. Never got that with Frank.
Its no Goodfellas tbh. They're similar in their delivery but Goodfellas is on another level for Scorssese
This is the most significant and salient criticism, tbf.
You can quite reasonably believe that the bad CGI isn’t distracting, which is fine, but it doesn’t change the fact that the first act of the film, where Frank (and by association the audience) is introduced to, seduced, and subsequently embraced by the gangster life, is conveyed through the lense of a very obviously old and tired monosyllabic man in a bad wig and awkward shoe pumps... who at no point are we ever encouraged to believe has a genuinely good or emotionally satisfying life of which to eventually tragically lose!
And I’m one of those of the opinion it’s a genuinely pretty good film... but I do think it’s hampered somewhat by being deliberately made as a swansong for a bunch of semi-immobile geezers.
It was his unassuming nature that made them take a shine to him, a WW2 veteran used to follow and kill on orders, perfect.
Agree. Good but nothing great.
Knowing what i know, watching them from young, it actually kinda sad watching them acting in their old ages. Kinda like their last swansong. I cant help but feel that this maybe their last hurrah
I watched it last week and haven't thought about it since. I hate to say it about a Scorsese but it was pretty ordinary. Absolutely no need to be 3.5 hours.
Pesci was good as ever but the rest of the cast pretty much phoned it in - it might have been a better idea to move away from his speed dial for this one.
Pesci was good as ever but the rest of the cast pretty much phoned it in - it might have been a better idea to move away from his speed dial for this one.
Just got to that scene. Holy hell that was horrible. The kicking was so funny, his foot was nowhere hear his head.I’m watching it right now. The grocery store beating was absolutely laughable. It was like a spoof action movie. Some Austin Powers shit. What the feck have I just seen?
More I think about it, a film thats hype is only garned because of the director and the cast. Any other Director and this would be a 6 on imbd.
Martin is great, but if he keeps directing he needs to lose the old guys. Move on and find new guys to work with...
Martin is great, but if he keeps directing he needs to lose the old guys. Move on and find new guys to work with...
Was all a bit meh, nothing ground breaking, will get hyped up because of the director and the 'galactico' cast.
But saying that, De Niro and Pacino were brilliant. It's a shame they didn't get much screen time together in their peaks.
But saying that, De Niro and Pacino were brilliant. It's a shame they didn't get much screen time together in their peaks.
I know there’s almost certainly a reason why this wouldn’t have actually worked for the whole film, or looked good enough on a big screen, or whatever, but it definitely doesn’t help as a contrast!