By @SimonCocking, review of Scorcese’s latest film, reuniting three of his usual suspects.

The Irishman

 The Irishman, reviewed

Scorcese gets the gang back together, for one final(?) outing. Taping into almost fifty years of epic, iconic movie making, and great performances by Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, it is certainly a compelling concept. Checking in at 3 and 1/2 hours this is a long outing, is it a film, is it a mini series? Recently a review of another film referred to the ‘Netflix-isation’ of content, where what could have been a perfectly workable 90 minute outing turned into an over two hours epic, to keep the bums on the seats.

This film may divide people in a similar way, even in our own household, some felt it was over long, too much talking, and simply more of the same. Personally, with such strong characters played by three great actors, it remained compelling and watchable. Scorcese has done well with the look and feel of the film too, with colours that felt in keeping with the tones of the sixties and the seventies. Music is used well, and at times it almost seemed like Scorcese, known for his love of music (having documented The Band, Bob Dylan, classic bluesmen and many more), was trying to out Tarantino Mr Tarantino.

The CGI de-aging of the main characters was a mixed bag. De Niro, as a World War Two soldier, looked like something out of a first person shooter game. His eyes and his cheeks looked a little off, something like botox gone wrong. With Al Pacino, as a de-aged Jimmy Hoffa, this seemed to work a lot better, and he looked much the same, just younger. With Joe Pesci it was hard at times to work out what was the de-aged version, and what was his present face, though his final ‘old’ face was quite impressive.

This technique has already been used in Star Wars to create a young Carrie Fisher, and also Grand Moff Tarkin, so it seems like we will see more and more of this approach. After the movie, on Netflix, there is a 20 minute follow up piece with Scorcese and all the of the principal leads. In discussing this technique they concluded it was basically ‘CGI as a form of makeup’. Scorcese did raise the interesting point that even though the ‘make up’ might make you look over twenty years younger, you still had to move appropriately too, like a forty year old, and not septuagenarian that they all now are.

With actors as great as these we felt the end justified the means, with Pacino perhaps just shading it, though he was allowed to go over the top, whereas Pesci and De Niro were told to reign it in. Still worth checking it out.

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