Three and a half hours among mafia bosses and union pumps in American 60s and 70s! With Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci! By Martin Scorsese!
The Irishman looks on paper like a very long and expensive farewell gift to Scorsese fans.
And to everyone else, it should turn out.

Anyone who expects any radical new gripes or surprises from the great man portrayed Scorsese combs zero. On the other hand, it doesn't matter at all. The narrative joy, precision, humor and beauty of The Irishman are characterized by such a masterpiece that the objections that occasionally try to grab attention in my thunderous brain realize that it is as good to give up.

In the well-known Scorsese way we have an interesting but unhappy man in the lead role. It is Robert De Niro's aged torpedo Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran who looks back on his life as a professional assassin and all the way to mafia boss Russel Bufalino and celebrity unionist Jimmy Hoffa who disappeared without a trace in 1975.

According to the biography I heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt, it was this Frank Sheeran who was behind Hoffa's disappearance. We meet him at the old age home, following an initial steadycam ride that is familiar to Mafia brothers. One of countless flashes of "gangster cannon" and Scorsese's own cinematography is made with the self-distance of a man in his fall. It is as if he calmly states that old is simply the oldest. Admittedly, a lot of money has been spent on digitally rejuvenating De Niro (with a nice result to be said), but it is nevertheless in his real age that De Niro radiates the most, even though it is not only the eyes that tremble with desperation, but also the cheeks and hands.

Italian mafia bosses are not very rare in American films and it is usually at least entertaining to step into the gangster world. What Scorsese adds to the genre here is (besides the humor and the elegance and the brilliance and all that) a kind of airing. For as important as the well-known mafia bosses with their distinctive Brooklyn dialect, preference for good food and good, chain-smoking wives, are the trade union gangsters. Al Pacino plays the charismatic and cholera Jimmy Hoffa, leader of the powerful Transport Workers' Union and deeply involved in organized crime.

"What the hell does that mean ?!" Hoffa can erupt when the Bufalino guys mumble mafia platitudes in their internal way, forcing them to declare that even a Protestant worker's snub is taking. It is disrespectful and very nice.

Scorsese presents some astonishing theories, including the murder of JFK and the failed Bay of Pigs. What is most fascinating, however, is the collaboration between the labor movement and organized crime whose common enemy is spelled Big Corporation and riveting politicians. Jimmy Hoffa fires up his members' anger during trade unions, roaring SOLIDARITY from the pulpit, while supporting Nixon and hating JFK so much that he raises the flag at the top after the Dallas assassination.

In addition to the interesting story writing that is told safely and in a good mood, The Irishman is fast and hysterically funny. Al Pacino roars, De Niro delivers his slightly delayed oneliners and Joe Pesci is… lovely. They are villains and mass murderers, but they love each other and try to mislead their corrupt lives with a kind of pity.

Despite a lack of sleep, I sit like a light for almost three hours. It is only at the end that the problems of making an epic mastodon roll appear. The last three quarters is not bad at all but it is 45 minutes out of the way. The energy goes down when countless threads are to be tied together, everything must be reported and terminated.

But just as I start to restlessly screw on me, the aged Robert De Niro makes a scene that makes the stomach tie. Suddenly, he is all the anxious and tough role characters he ever made at the same time, though with experience and a kind of desperate desire for forgiveness. At the same time, on a larger plane, it feels like The Irishman is the movie Martin Scorsese always tried to make.

The Irishman premieres on selected tablecloths today, Friday. Netflix premiere on 27/11.