The Irishman is a vintage Martin Scorsese film. This is both great and terrible.
While Marty Scorsese didn't pioneer the Requiem for the Bad Guy genre, and he's not responsible for the some of the worst examples, such as Johnny Depp in Blow (2001), nor the rabid popularity of absolute villain Walter White in the series Breaking Bad, or the ridiculous coquettish attraction the Right has towards the horrendous Joker (2019), but he did seemingly perfect the Elegy for Unrepentant Criminal.
Robert DeNiro's portray of Frank Sheeran in The Irishman makes the titular character into a misunderstood regular working-class shmoe who just happened to fall in with the Mob. I don't for one second buy the film's recounting of his Sheeran's first meeting with Russel Bufalino in an old highway gas station, wherein the affable Mob boss fixes the mechanical problem with Sheeran's old jalopy of a truck. Sheeran isn't some stumblebum anti-hero no matter how he tried to spin his lifetime of theft and murder; he's the bad guy. Period. Unlike, the unreliable narrator Arthur Fleck, who may or may not be the actual Joker, and the events on the screen are probably delusions or psychotic fantasies happening entirely in the character's head, Sheeran's biased recollections, which form the base of the movie, are the calculated lies of a career criminal
Now, despite not believing DeNiro's portrayal of Sheeran as this aw shucks regular jamoke who just happened to have committed several famous Mob murders the least interesting thing about the story is the actual death of Jimmy Hoffa. Now, far be it for me to provide any type of film-making suggestions to Marty Scorcesse, but the best scene in the whole film is the 10 minute fish discussion inside the gaudy 1970's red Lincoln. But, that gets to the other problem with The Irishman; it's loooooooooong. Way, way, way too long. For a film, that is... If this was done as a 4 part, 75 minute episode mini-series it would have killed. Indulgent vignettes like the fish scene could have been expanded and the movie would have been broken into digestible chunks or consumed in a marathon binge for those interested.
But, I'm certain Scorsese stated flatly he's a filmmaker not some gauche, run-of-the-mill mini-series director. And no doubt everyone at Netflix said whatever you want Mister Scorsese.
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