Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman runs 209 minutes and never wastes one of them. The film follows Frank Sheeran, a World War II veteran and truck driver who becomes a hitman for mobster Russell Bufalino, then a close friend and bodyguard to Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa. Robert De Niro plays Sheeran. Al Pacino plays Hoffa. Joe Pesci plays Bufalino, his first film role after years away.
Trailer, via Netflix.
De Niro, Pacino and Pesci
The three leads carry the film. Steven Zaillian wrote the screenplay, based on Charles Brandt’s 2004 book I Heard You Paint Houses. De Niro also produced. Pesci turned the role down many times, saying he did not want to do “the gangster thing again.” Scorsese argued the film would be “different.” De Niro helped close it, telling Pesci: “We gotta do this. Who knows if there’ll be anything after?”
I’d been wanting to work with Al for years.
That is Scorsese on Pacino, his first time directing him.
A Cast Built Over Decades
The Irishman is De Niro and Scorsese’s ninth film together, their first since 1995’s Casino. It is the fourth to star De Niro and Pacino, after The Godfather Part II, Heat and Righteous Kill. It is the seventh pairing of De Niro and Pesci. Pacino and Pesci share a screen for the first time.
| Pairing | Count | Earlier films |
|---|---|---|
| De Niro and Scorsese | 9th | Casino (1995) |
| De Niro and Pacino | 4th | The Godfather Part II, Heat, Righteous Kill |
| De Niro and Pesci | 7th | Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Casino |
| Pacino and Pesci | 1st | none |
What the Film Is Actually About
The plot spans decades. Sheeran sells meat shipments to a Philadelphia gangster called Skinny Razor, then meets Bufalino through union lawyer Bill Bufalino. He starts “painting houses” — the film’s word for contract killing. Hoffa runs the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and has financial ties to Bufalino’s crime family. He fights with rising Teamster Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano and with the federal government. Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general, forms a “Get Hoffa” squad. Hoffa is convicted in 1964 for jury tampering. Sheeran becomes his chief bodyguard, and Hoffa grows close to Sheeran’s daughter Peggy.
The runtime is the point, not a fault. Scorsese uses it to show how loyalty curdles into obligation over twenty years, and how a man who kills for a living still calls it friendship. The de-aging work drew attention, but the performances do the labor. Pesci, quiet and watchful, is the revelation. Pacino’s Hoffa is loud, vain and doomed, and the film knows it.
The Irishman is a crime drama that doubles as a history of American power — unions, mobs and politics sharing one table. It earns its length.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
