My Review of "The Irishman"

The Irishman is the latest Martin Scorsese film and it so happens to be exclusive to Netflix. This really shows that Netflix is willing to pay top talent to get exclusive rights to high caliber content on their streaming service. It makes sense too because there is a lot of competition coming their way in terms of competing streaming services.

This movie is based on true life events that happened in the United States over the course of many years. It's about a mobster henchman by the name of Frank Sheeran, played by Robert De Niro. He's a war hero that came back and got himself mixed up with the mob only to eventually work for and befriend Jimmy Hoffa, played by Al Pacino. A long time has passed since these events so a lot of us don't really realize how big Jimmy Hoffa really was and in this movie it details the power that he had over the United States. Frank's real boss was actually Russell Bufalino, played by Joe Pesci. He's a gigantic crime boss that plays everyone like a game of chess.

First off, it's hard to say that the incidents in the movie are based on real events that actually happened in real life but we don't know if their portrayal is entirely accurate. The reason we don't know if everything is accurate is because it was a time when no one would snitch on anyone and those secrets were kept to the grave with all the mobsters involved. We do know that some of the high profile hits actually happened though.

It's really interesting how much detail they went into when they told this story. There's a ton that happens, in fact there's so much that the runtime of this movie is 3 hours and 30 minutes. I had to watch this movie in installments, that's how long it was. This could have been a short TV series instead of a 3 hour plus long movie. It even felt like it could have been better off as a 2 or 3 part movie or TV series. Having this huge run time was really ambitious and it's not to say that it gets really boring. Scorsese has a way to keep the audience drawn in and interested in the characters. I was intrigued through the whole run time of the movie it's just that I had things to do during the day that prevented me from watching it in one sitting.

The movie was big in scale but you could also tell the budget of the movie was high as well. They were also ambitious in the special effects department. They used some sort of CGI to make some of the actors to look much younger than they are. There's also make up to make some of them look older in later parts of the movie as well. The CGI was quite impressive but it's not entirely there. There are certain moments in the movie where you can obviously see the CGI to make the actor look young. Some of it probably wasn't too hard for them. Robert De Niro does a lot of long stares at the camera and sometimes you feel it's just the same CGI image just staring at the screen. When it works it works really well but when it doesn't it's a little distracting to see.

They probably picked the best cast they could get for this movie. It's Martin Scorsese so I don't think they had any issues getting any of the actors. He's Hollywood royalty so when he asks someone to be in his movie they're obviously going to say yes. I was even surprised to see Joe Pesci in this movie. He hasn't been in movies for a long time. Only Martin Scorsese would have the power to take him out of retirement and put him in a movie.

This is a step in the right direction for Netflix. I can only imagine their worry about competing streaming companies. They have to ensure that they have high quality content for people to continue to subscribe to their service. This might be a difficult task because once someone's seen a movie they might not want to stay on your streaming source because they've finished the movie. It only means Netflix has to continue to make high quality movies so that subscribers will continue to stay on in anticipation for the next big thing.

Overall, I would say that this movie was really well made. It had me intrigued from beginning to end however it was a bit long for me to watch in one sitting. I would love to have enough time in my day to just sit down for 3 and a half hours to watch a movie. I think the run time kind of hurts this movie and it should have been split into different parts. Some of the CGI de-aging was a little distracting as well but nothing that would totally ruin my experience. I really liked this movie and have to give it a 7.5 out of 10. If I ever have the time to fully re-watch it I would kind of debate it because it's a really long movie.