The Irishman 2019

     This film is based on a book by Charles Brandt titled I Heard You Paint Houses.  The main storyline is about an aging hitman remembering his time with the mob and the friends he had from 1950 to the 1970’s.  Frank Sheeran is a former labor union high official and mob hit man.  He learned to kill in Italy during WWII.  He is looking back on his life and the murders that defined his mob career.  He has also continued to maintain connections with the Bufalino crime family.  He claims to have had a role in the disappearance of his life-long friend Jimmy Hoffa.  Jimmy was the former president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.  Jimmy vanished in late July 1975 at the age of 62.

     This is an epic crime drama and violence is extremely strong.  There are many murders with blood spurts, guns, shooting, strangling, fighting, punching, yelling, explosions, killing of chickens, a slow motion shooting with extra blood.  Language is also constant, characters smoke cigarettes and cigars, drinking is common but usually in a social setting.  It lines up with Scorsese’s earlier classic movies but it is more reflective and melancholy.  I really feel there could have been stricter editing because over three hours is a LONG movie!!    
 
3 hours and 29 min, Bio directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Steven Zaillian with Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Paquin. Stephen Graham, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Jack Huston, Katherine Narducci, Jack Huston. 

Note:  Imdb 7.9 out of 10 with 290,523 reviews,  Rotten Tomatoes 96% reviews with 424 critics 86% audience with 1,057 reviews, Roger Ebert 3 1/2* Matt Zoller Seitz, RollingStone  5* Peter Travers, The Guardian 4* out of 5* Mark Kermode, Metacritic 94 out of 100 with 55 critics, 8.1 user score out of 10, 785 positive, 87 mixed, 77 negative, Amazon 4.4* out of 5* with 112 reviews, Letterboxd 4* out of 5* with 631 reviews, Common Sense Media, Jeffrey M. Anderson,  age 17+, positive messages 2, role models 0, violence 5, sex 1, language 5, consumerism 1, drinking drugs & smoking 3. 

Special Note:  Nominated for 10 Oscars, another 71 award wins and 310 nominations.  Martin Scorsese has also directed other gangster films, Goodfellas 1990 and Casino 1995.  Joe Pesci refused multiple times (possibly 50 times) to come out of retirement to appear in this film.  Frank Sheeran says the line, “Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead!”  Surprisingly, he is quoting Benjamin Franklin.  Martin Scorsese has said that he couldn’t get a Hollywood studio to back his epic mob movie.  They claimed that nobody was interested in making a film with him and Robert DeNiro anymore?  Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos proposed a budget of $160 million and the project was given the green light.  This is the longest film Scorsese has directed and the longest mainstream film released in over 20 years.

Run Times for other Scorsese films:  Silence 2016 (2 hours 41 min), Wolf of Wall Street 2013 (3 hours), Hugo 2011 (2 hours 6 min), Shutter Island 2010 (2 hours and 18 min), The Departed  2006 (2 hours 31 min).