Before watching The Irishman, I would have said Martin Scorsese never needed to make another gangster movie again. I mean, how many Mob guys killing each other does anyone need to see?
And yet, The Irishman is on my list of best movies of the year.
Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino are phenomenal as, respectively, 1) Frank Sheeran, a truck driver who goes to work for 2) Russell Bufalino, head of the Pennsylvania crime family and ends up getting involved with 3) Jimmy Hoffa, head of the Teamsters.
The main thing everybody seems to be focusing on about The Irishman, though — more than the story, more than the performances — is that it has a running time of 3 hours and 30 minutes. Before our critics screening, we all made multiple trips to the restroom and we barely took a sip of our small drinks during the movie. So I get it.
But, on post after post on my Facebook feed, people are making jokes about watching 4,000 hours of The Irishman and only being halfway through.
And here’s the problem. The Irishman is a Netflix film — and the last movie that should be. It’s meant to be watched on a big screen in a theater with no cell phones and no distractions. It’s an epic story that spans decades (and includes the miraculous de-aging of its main characters) and is not intended to be casually glanced at while scrolling through Instagram.
With attention spans at an all-time low, you need to be a captive audience in a movie theater to actually focus these days.
Ironically, the movie itself feels like a last hurrah to a time past. There’s a real nostalgia to these characters, played by the best in the business. They make you care about them even though they are, in most ways, despicable.
The Irishman is a fitting end to the gangster movie genre, which feels out of touch and obsolete and which has the same death rattle as the old white man patriarchy itself. Scorsese knows that, and the movie ultimately is about the toll these men’s violent lives have taken on them and the emptiness with which it leaves them in old age.
Do yourself a favor and see The Irishman in a theater rather than watching it on your phone or in your living room. Give it the attention and Oscars it deserves, then say goodbye to these goombahs forever because, after The Irishman, Scorsese officially never needs to make another gangster movie again.
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