The Irishman

Mr. Rude
Nov 15
2 min read

Instead of “The Irishman”, this movie should be called “Unemployment Insurance for Old White Men Who Otherwise Couldn’t get a Job.” Imagine the tallest Siberian Spruce in East Russia in the dead of winter with sap running down. This movie is slower than that. For an agonizing 3 hours and 29 minutes, I endured pointless exclamations, worthless scenes with no dialogue, and events that give the term, “suspension of disbelief”, a whole new meaning.

To buy into this, you must believe the following:

That a 75-year-old man can kick the crap out of a guy half his age. (Robert Dinero)
That this same old man has a 25-year-old digital face, yet still moves like grandpa.
That a 5’3” geriatric fossil who looks like he’s on leave from a nursing home is a notorious East Coast mob boss feared by all. (Joe Pesci)
That a 79-year-old man who constantly screams at 150 decibels is a respected leader of America’s most powerful union. (Al Pacino)

Allow me to “Help me, help you”, and condense this tedious pile of air into four sentences:

Robert Dinero plays Frank Sheeran and drives a truck to deliver beef.
Joe Pesci is Russell Bafalino, a big-time crime boss; and Al Pacino is Jimmy Hoffa, the head The Teamsters.
Dinero befriends Pacino and Pesci and becomes a mob hitman for Pesci.
Pacino gets too big for his britches and Pesci has Dinero kill Pacino.

There you go. You’ve just added 3 hours to your life!

Some other painful and ridiculous items:

The movie starts off playing “In the Still of the Night”, and slowly strolls through a nursing home to finally arrive upon an aged Robert Dinero. Ten minutes of absurdity.
The flick is littered with old 50’s tunes, one after the other. Who knows why.
Harvey Keitel shows up as a mob boss and has maybe a minute of screen time. Whatever.

Lastly, to show the charitable side of Hollywood, this ridiculous montage of senseless scenes is then nominated for 10 Academy awards. It went 0 for 10. The dialogue is so predictable, you can easily guess the actor’s next lines. Like Hollywood, I too will be charitable and give this movie a much higher rating than it deserves. Sucks.