So we finally sat down to watch The Irishman which really is quite an endeavor given its length and I can’t say that I enjoyed the experience much at all. Given that it’s by Martin Scorsese and all of the accolades it picked up, we couldn’t have skipped it but perhaps we should have as it feels like a retread of the director’s greatest hits, complete with his favorite actors, plot points, themes and characterizations. It’s excellent work to be certain but it all feels like something we’ve seen before, stretched out to epic length.

Frank Sheeran is a World War II veteran who works as a truck driver after his return to the US. To pad his earnings, he starts stealing the meat cargo he is transporting to resell and gets the attention of the mafia. After a union lawyer successfully defends him in court, he begins to carry out hits for mob boss Russell Bufalino. He seems to excel in this job as he feels no remorse for killing at all, claiming that he has carried out massacres while serving as a soldier in Europe. He is introduced to Jimmy Hoffa, the head of the Teamsters union, who is then friendly to the Mafia and uses the union’s retirement fund to invest in mob-related businesses. While serving as Hoffa’s bodyguard their families grow close but relations between Hoffa and the mob start to fall apart during the presidency of John F. Kennedy. After Hoffa is successfully prosecuted by the new Attorney-General Robert Kennedy and jailed, the mob finds his replacement as the head of the Teamsters to be more amiable to their needs. When he gets out of jail, Hoffa is determined to regain control of the union and Frank is torn between loyalty to his friend and the mob.

I knew that all of these are real people but I only had the vaguest of impressions as to why they mattered so all this is highly educational. The added detail that the mob bosses backed Kennedy’s presidency because he had promised them he would oust Castro and hence help them recover their property in Cuba was a real eye-opener for me. The cast of characters is once again huge but Scorsese does a reasonable job at keeping us on top of things and it is amusing to see that this even ties in to the film Casino that we only just watched recently as the mob uses the union money to fund their Las Vegas casinos. It’s lurid and fascinating in the way that all such exposés of true crime tend to be, though personally I’m tired of such brute thuggery and preferred the more complex and specific financial machinery shown in Casino. Plus of course, there is an undeniable satisfaction in watching greats like Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci etc. reunite on the screen.

Unfortunately I find that this film’s lack of ambition and the smallness of its subject and themes are unworthy of all these big names. Frank’s story is that of an unusually loyal Mafia footsoldier remarkable only because of his close association with Jimmy Hoffa. The film might have had a stronger emotional core if it focused exclusively on the relationship between Sheeran and Hoffa but even with the two veteran actors playing the two characters, there doesn’t seem to be much of a chemistry there. Instead, the film seems to be trying to portray Sheeran’s entire life within the context of the era, almost as if it were a documentary. Scorsese’s own abiding fascination for the mobsters of the era shines through but he fails to convince us why it matters that these people should be remembered. Still he does seem astute enough to understand that most people now don’t care at all, showing the nurse tending to the aged Sheeran being completely ignorant of who Hoffa was.

This means that while this film is technically proficient, it feels soulless and somewhat pointless as it’s too similar to the things that Scorsese has done before. I think even using CGI to de-age Robert De Niro is a mistake as the CGI is imperfect and even with its help I doubt that audiences are willing to buy him as a young tough trying to break into the mob world. Overall I find it tough to recommend this. It’s too long, too ponderous and too derivative.