The Irishman

Amazing acting, great story lines and some twists. Loved how the story was told through the eyes of De Niro's character as he was at the end of his life.

For anyone that likes gangster movies, it is worth a watch - high quality actors from across the great gangster films. The only negative is that it lasts 3.5 hours. This would put me off watching it again soon, but definitely worth seeing for the first time.

Kept me glued throughout - defo give it a watch. You won't be disappointed.

Peoples are losing their minds over the sainted director, forgetting the movie. Sure, it's well made, fascinating history. But it's second nature for De Niro, and Pacino overreaches at times. The third reel is repetitive over the decline of the De Niro character. Would be a better movie at 2hr 30. In fact, I thought it had ended about then, but it meandered on another hour.

Some might hate it but here is a little bit of truth about the Irishman, against the 8s and the 9s and the 10s: It is a "Too long didn't read" kind of movie. What is the reason of this enormous more-than-three-hours runtime? Probably to enjoy as much as possible Pesci, Pacino and De Niro working together. But folks, this time has come and gone... Goodfellas, Casino etc. and anything Scorcese did is amazing. But getting mob-type genre back in play in 2020 needs a bit of a twist and taste for the different audiences. 3' 24" is outrageously long and slow even for the fanatics. I watched it on Netflix and it took 2 days to go through the movie. Very slow character development, which is absolutely not necessary, as we as audiences are already trained in this genre. If you don't like this mob-type genre and these actors, there is almost no chance you would watch this movie or you 'd drop it after half an hour. Only plus is the good acting of course and the great directing but...if you are new to this genre, start from the classics! 6/10

First off, let me set this straight that I'm not repeled by long or slow films. However, The Irishman is at the very least 30-40 minutes too long, and the suspense sometimes is killed off by characters dragging the scene too much. The biggest offender would be the second last arc which I'm not gonna spoil.

Secondly, for such a slow film you'd expect the pay off to be worth it, but it isn't. The message of the film is revealed very early on, and it's very obvious where this particular plot line is going to. These 2 factors (slow pace and obvious plotline) make the film feels particularly unrewarding to me.

Third is the lack of the 'wow' factor, which is disappointing for such a godlike cast and crew. There is not a single memorable scene or line that stands out for me, despite the actors all doing a phenomenal job. And no, I don't really mind the CGI, even though it's not the best thing since sliced bread. The music is not memorable either, even though it can be an artistic choice to make the film feels more grounded and unglamorous.

So where does this leave us? Personally I don't think this is a bad film, but it feels disappointing with such a big roster. Don't expect this to be the film to watch with friends over, as it's pretty (unneccessarily) lengthy and the undertone is meant to be a heavy one.

You have to be absolutely out of your mind to legitimately think that this is Scorcese at his best and ignore all the flaws in this movie. Yes, I get it, he made a lot of great movies in his time, but this isn't one of them.

A scene early on with Deniro beating someone up sums up the movie pretty well. The random no-name actor getting beat up is the only one exhibiting any emotion, as Deniro's character and his daughter sleepwalk their way through the scene like most of the cast does through most other scenes. It can be a bit hard to tell though since the camera zooms out so far that you can hardly see their faces, probably in an effort to avoid using the piss poor de-aging effects during an "action" scene, but it doesn't much matter because it's still close enough that we can see Deniro noticeably physically struggling to get through the scene. It looks awful and its depressing to see Deniro like this and to realize that Scorcese thought this scene was ok like this (why would they not have just used a stand-in here?), and this is pretty much how the movie feels in general.

This is a very noticeably weak effort from Scorcese. Most of the characters are wooden and just seem bored to be there. Pesci and Deniro are shockingly lifeless here. Pacino seems to be the only one giving any effort, but even his performance only comes off like a pale imitation of his old self.

Again, the de-aging effects are very weak and it's pretty jarring to see the flashback version of Deniro's character be referred to as if he's a young man (Pesci even calls him KID), but still looks like he's about 50.

There are a ton of side characters introduced, most of which disappear immediately after their introductions and serve no real purpose. Likewise there are many vestigial scenes that serve no purpose to advance either plot or character.

The plot is of course your typical gangster fare that we've seen from Scorcese so many times already. Guy gets into a life of crime, rises in the ranks, gets rich and lives it up, and then everything comes crashing down because he and everyone else he knows are absolutely terrible people, blah blah blah, we've seen it all before, but you know, you take something more recent of his like The Wolf of Wall Street and even though it uses that same old formula it still manages to be interesting because the characters have such personality and style and they keep your eyes glued to the conflict even though you already know exactly where it's going.

Here? Not so much. The Irishman is an absolutely unremarkable mobster story with completely forgettable characters that don't seem at all interested in their roles and some production values and cinematography that the so-called king of cinema should be embarrassed to be associated with, and let me tell you, you people defending this weak excuse for a film aren't doing Scorcese or "cinema" any favors by blindly swallowing this crap and acting like it's the greatest thing you've ever seen. If you're so willing to suck down any product, no matter how bad, just because it has a big time famous name attached to it than you're really no better than the popcorn action movies and fans that you're so quick to condemn.

As someone who's seen every Scorcese film before this, this is a 5/10 AT BEST and I will never pretend otherwise just because he did a lot of great films in the past.