The Irishman Review

Scorsese's last word on the genre he defined is not a gangster film but an actuarial one, three and a half hours spent totalling what a life of usefulness to other men costs. Robert De Niro plays Frank Sheeran as a man with almost no interior, and that emptiness is the point: he is a house painter who does what he is told and cannot explain himself to his daughter or to a priest. Al Pacino's Hoffa is the loudest thing here and the most alive.

Joe Pesci, coaxed out of retirement, is the revelation, playing Russell Bufalino in a near whisper, and it may be the best work he has ever done. The digital de-aging is the most discussed element and the least interesting one; the seam shows in how a seventy year old man moves, never in his face. Thelma Schoonmaker's cutting keeps four decades legible. The final forty minutes, a nursing home, a coffin catalogue and a door left slightly open, justify everything in front of them. We hold that the length is the argument, not an indulgence.