The Irishman

Martin Scorsese’s mobster epic The Irishman harnesses the latest in film technology to follow the story’s primary characters as they age through decades of gangland maneuvering and murder. Robert De Niro is the narrator and pseudonymous fixer, Frank Sheeran, who performs both painting (hits) and carpentry (disposals) for pay — he’s got mouths to feed. When we meet Sheeran, he’s an old man reflecting on his life after war duty in Italy. He begins with driving a meat truck in Philadelphia, stealing from his bosses and making friends with powerful criminals, including mob boss Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) and later Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) and becoming a trusted consigliere as well as wet worker. That Sheeran is his own witness leaves his accounting open to question, of course, but his tale of rising to capo in a crime family while serving two masters (the Mafia and the IBT) is fascinating. Scorsese is nonpareil as a storyteller, and he manages the complexity of mob action and political wrangling with dexterity. Yes, he loves criminals, and his treatment of these wise guys is no less affectionate than his earlier valentines Goodfellas, Gangs of New York and The Departed, but that’s not to say he’s amoral or that The Irishman celebrates corruption. In fact, the film includes screen notes on the often grisly deaths of the gangsters Sheeran encounters over the years — those we don’t actually see dispatched by a bullet to the face. That Sheeran himself survives to tell the tale — or at least his version — is not so much cynical as existential. As one G-man reminds him, everyone he’s known and loved is either dead or has abandoned him. That he is alone and hoping for more — redemption? expiation?  — in the picture’s last reel is a powerful statement.