Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 07:38:58 PM

Login with username, password and session length

The Irishman (new Scorsese film feat. De Niro, Pacino, Pesci)

Started by Blinder Data, October 16, 2019, 03:57:53 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

jobotic

Sleep Walk is a brilliant record.

Haven't seen the film. Thanks.


edit: new page too. It is what it is.

Elderly Sumo Prophecy


checkoutgirl

Watched it 3 times now and already planning another viewing so clearly I can't get enough of this. The music and acting and dialogue are all such a pleasure to be in the company of. When Pesci is telling a shop owner that his kid is a pain in the ass and says "Your kid is a real svatchaa" and I couldn't find the word "svatchaa" on Google. It's actually spelt "sfigato".

Frank is this empathy void, even when he's speaking to the one daughter still willing to meet with him he still seems unable to realise that he did anything wrong "I was just trying to protect her. Protect all of youse. I mean, that's what I was doing." He seems strangely distant from his children, even when they were young. The things that made him great at killing made him terrible at being a normal dad. I think that's the central message.

And then the end where his wife dies and he has nobody. He can't show any remorse, he's incapable of it. And when the priest is basically prompting him to have some guilt and remorse for murdering people "I think we can... we can be sorry... We can be sorry even when we don't feel sorry. Well, for us to say, to make a decision of the will... "God... I am sorry, God. Forgive me." And that... that's a decision of the will." But Frank doesn't give a shit "Water under the dam"

The most chilling bit of dialogue for me is before he takes out Joe Gallo he says "It was his birthday so he'd be there with his wife and his kid which, in this case, that's good because that's the point. They should have to see what it's like." Basically oh yeah, you want to have a gangster daddy, well then you're going to have to see him shot to death. Crazy rationale there. You harm a hair oh his daughter's arm and he goes mental but then turns around and traumatises the children of another guy because "They should have to see what it's like".

There definitely are riches in this film.

bgmnts

Quote from: checkoutgirl on December 11, 2019, 01:14:58 PM
The most chilling bit of dialogue for me is before he takes out Joe Gallo he says "It was his birthday so he'd be there with his wife and his kid which, in this case, that's good because that's the point. They should have to see what it's like." Basically oh yeah, you want to have a gangster daddy, well then you're going to have to see him shot to death. Crazy rationale there.

I think the point is that Joe Colombo was murdered in front of his wife and children.

checkoutgirl

Quote from: bgmnts on December 11, 2019, 01:23:57 PM
I think the point is that Joe Colombo was murdered in front of his wife and children.

The worst part about Frank is he's a hypocrite. I don't care if you murder dozens of people as long as you're not a hypocrite.

checkoutgirl

I did feel sorry for Frank towards the end of the film. I know he's a monster and everything but you could put Robert Mugabe alone in that nursing home, on Christmas eve, with nobody to be with, as the priest leaves the door open a bit, you could put anybody in that situation and I'd feel a bit sorry for them. Except maybe Piers Morgan. But that might be because my family hasn't been murdered by them right in front of me in a clam restaurant in Little Italy in 1972 when I was just a little kid.

Piers Morgan is the kind of motherfucker who'd wear shorts to a meeting. shaking my damn head


Elderly Sumo Prophecy

Technically his name means Robert from Niro, so I'd say De Niro. I've seen it wirtten as DeNiro countless times though, so who knows.


Elderly Sumo Prophecy

What was with the Canada Dry product placement? Hoffa was quite often in the scene with a rather conspicuously placed bottle of it next to him. It's a shit drink anyway, he should have been drinking that Jamaican stuff.

Alberon

Finally watched this over two viewings a few days apart. It's very good, but perhaps not great. The young faces on obviously old bodies caused problems, but it was only conspicuous in three or four scenes. The CGI process can work, but it's like plastic surgery - there's only so far you can go before it looks silly.

I suspect the big problem Scorsese had in trying to sell the film to other studios was more the runtime rather than the budget. At three and a half hours you reduce the number of times it can be shown a day on a cinema screen.

One of the last scenes between Pacino and DeNiro before the fateful day there's a bit where Frank is trying to convince Hoffa and his eyes keep flicking from Hoffa to, seemingly, the camera. Was he just looking away from Hoffa or what?

Pacino is on fire, but DeNiro does have a problem with Frank. He's mostly just a moral vacuum drifting through the film.

Bu I enjoyed the film, retreading the visual ethic of Goodfellas and Casino though that it is. It doesn't feel over three hours long despite being deliberately slow.

Inspector Norse

Quote from: Alberon on December 15, 2019, 06:07:22 AM
Finally watched this over two viewings a few days apart.

Same here.

Same conclusion, too: a good film, but not top-drawer Scorsese. It's overlong; though the ruminative final hour is powerful, it takes its often tedious time getting there and there are a few issues. The CGI isn't too much of a problem, but it makes an immediate poor impression when the supposedly youthful De Niro is trundling jerkily around (for example when beating up the grocer).

De Niro is solid, Pacino is Pacino, Pesci and Graham (surely he's going to get something really big at some point?) are the real stars. Ridiculous supporting cast, too: Scorsese really overloads the film and there were quite a few scenes where I was left trying to figure out just who somebody was (the guy Joey Gallo has shot, for instance - I still don't know who he was or why anybody cared). A couple of name actors have nothing to do (Paquin, Cannavale), and a few names really surprised me - that's Herc from The Wire as Fat Tony? Louis Cancelmi impressed me, a new name. I'm still scrolling through the cast list - 452 names strong, for fuck's sake! - to find out where I've seen so-and-so before.

What stops the film really standing out is a general lack of theme or substance in the first couple of hours: there's not much going on below the surface, and Sheeran's amorality makes him simply pretty uninteresting. It's also, for a Scorsese film at least, a bit short on really memorable scenes or lines. The fish conversation in the car had me in stitches, though.

Lucy Gallina (young Peggy) was the star of the whole film for me. Clearly the film's conscience. Pacino overdid the gestures IMHO but at least he was playing a character who was written as a blowhard. De Niro brings out the sociopathic nature of Frank's violence but the walking as a younger man just doesn't work; cartoonish at times. Pesci's age is also all over the place but he proves he can do silent menace; sometimes seems to have morphed into Eli Wallach.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Wallach#/media/File:Eli_Wallach_-_publicity.jpg

Armin Meiwes

Got to say the further I am from seeing it (saw it in the cinema first week of release) the less I like it, just think it was a bit of a mess really.. none of the characterisations were interesting - just had nothing about them, the anti ageing thing didn't really work (how fucking old was De Niro meant to be in that first scene when Pesci kept calling him "kid", he looked about 50 ffs!) can't really think of one stand out scene and what was all that "Billy "big balls" Balloteli killed in a car park January 1978 with a piece of lead piping" shit about.. I don't even know who it is why do I give a fuck!

phantom_power

Quote from: Armin Meiwes on January 01, 2020, 06:58:54 PM
Got to say the further I am from seeing it (saw it in the cinema first week of release) the less I like it, just think it was a bit of a mess really.. none of the characterisations were interesting - just had nothing about them, the anti ageing thing didn't really work (how fucking old was De Niro meant to be in that first scene when Pesci kept calling him "kid", he looked about 50 ffs!) can't really think of one stand out scene and what was all that "Billy "big balls" Balloteli killed in a car park January 1978 with a piece of lead piping" shit about.. I don't even know who it is why do I give a fuck!

I am the opposite. The more I think about it, the more I like it. All the "logistical" stuff, like the de-aging, fades away and you are left with the story and themes, which stay with you

the science eel


Ham Bap

Thought it was confusing watching the de-aging scenes.
It took me out of the film too much, sat there wondering what age DeNiro was meant to be but didn't look like.
And the old man/young DeNiro beating the man outside the shop looks worse with every viewing.
Why bother tainting your $150m film that took years of effort to put together with this shit?

Just use younger actors ffs. No-one would have batted an eyelid.

Blumf

Quote from: Ham Bap on January 02, 2020, 09:50:32 AM
And the old man/young DeNiro beating the man outside the shop looks worse with every viewing.

That was the worst part of the de-aging. How old was he meant to be there? 20s? 30s? Because it just looked like a 70 y.o. half heartedly tapping down a rubbish bag.

Couldn't they have used a body double (with CGI face) for that wide shot on that?

Other than that, liked it. Didn't know much about Hoffer, still don't really, but seems like a good starting point. How historically accurate is the film?

EOLAN

Quote from: Blumf on January 02, 2020, 11:47:08 AM
That was the worst part of the de-aging. How old was he meant to be there? 20s? 30s? Because it just looked like a 70 y.o. half heartedly tapping down a rubbish bag.

Couldn't they have used a body double (with CGI face) for that wide shot on that?

Other than that, liked it. Didn't know much about Hoffer, still don't really, but seems like a good starting point. How historically accurate is the film?

Think the film is primarily based on (The Irishman) Frank Sheeran's retelling of his life and his 'Bedside Confession' to Hoffa's killing. There has been a lot of doubt put down on Thornton's version of events. Hoffa's murder is still unsolved and this version isn't seen as being likely.

Other stuff in the film seems to be broadly accurate of what happened.

jobotic

Only seen it once, but we couldn't even see De Niro's face when he duffed up the grocer could we? So why not have a younger double.

And he looked like a CGId old De Niro, we know what a young De Niro looks like and it isn't that. To which the answer is "he wasn't playing himself, he's an actor" I suppose.

Puce Moment

I think it negatively affected the epic sweep of the film, in as much as it did not seem that generational or spanning many decades because the de-ageing just kept De Niro in his middle-ages. They have 35mm 4k digitised footage of De Niro from many angles all the way through his 20s. Most of it shot by Scorsese! Why didn't they just use that?

Doomy Dwyer

I've seen this a couple of times now (both times in the cinema) and it was only on the second viewing that the CGI was an issue for me. I think that during the first watch I was far more absorbed with the story and the 'event' to notice some of the uncannier moments, although, like Armin has said, Pesci referring to Bob as 'kid' was hilarious whatever age they were supposed to be. Having said that, even on the first watch, watching De Niro administer a grocerial kerb stomping so gingerly and listlessly was grim viewing, particularly to a man who has measured his life in on screen beatings delivered with a rhythmic enthusiasm and a classic rock soundtrack by the grimacing Italian American icon. In the past whenever Bob has obliged with an unnecessarily prolonged beating it's the relentlessness and savagery that made one wince. This time I just feared for the man's hip. I can't help but wonder whether the scene was included as an in-joke, harking back, as it did, to so many of Bob and Marty's magisterial cinematic shoeings over the decades past, or was perhaps meant to stand as a metatextual comment on the films themes of decay and powerlessness that we all must face when confronted by an implacable foe (be it god/time/conscience/scousers in shorts)? I just don't know. Perhaps I'd have to watch it again to make a proper judgement.

Joe Pesci is absolutely amazing, particularly toward the end. He attains the inner peace that Frank can never achieve. Frank is a blank monster in a world of monsters. But then, we're all Frankies, aren't we? We're all lying in hell.

Happy New Year CaB.   

Elderly Sumo Prophecy

#173
The grocery store owner shouldn't have even been hurt, considering how gently DeNiro was kicking his fucking head in.
There's also that bit where he's clambering over some rocks where he's obviously being very careful with his footing, whereas a younger man would be striding over that shit. Then he chucks his gun in the water. Underarm. Like a girl.

Noodle Lizard

Quote from: Puce Moment on January 02, 2020, 01:19:14 PM
I think it negatively affected the epic sweep of the film, in as much as it did not seem that generational or spanning many decades because the de-ageing just kept De Niro in his middle-ages. They have 35mm 4k digitised footage of De Niro from many angles all the way through his 20s. Most of it shot by Scorsese! Why didn't they just use that?

That's more along the lines of what I was expecting - essentially very high-tech, multimillion dollar deep-faking and body doubles when needed - and it makes me think, like someone else suggested, that maybe some promises about the technology weren't kept. If some internet geeks can convincingly turn Bill Hader into young Tom Cruise or Arnold Schwarzenegger, it theoretically shouldn't be impossible to turn old De Niro into young De Niro using similar techniques. Maybe Scorsese thought it'd interfere with the performances or authenticity of the thing, which is fair enough, but either way you've got a 75-year-old playing someone in their 20s and 30s.

The only feasable explanation I can imagine is that De Niro is not supposed to look like the young De Niro, but the young Frank Sheeran. Hence why they change his eye colour also. But the tech is unconvincing either way

Blumf

Quote from: EOLAN on January 02, 2020, 11:53:49 AM
Think the film is primarily based on (The Irishman) Frank Sheeran's retelling of his life and his 'Bedside Confession' to Hoffa's killing. There has been a lot of doubt put down on Thornton's version of events. Hoffa's murder is still unsolved and this version isn't seen as being likely.

Other stuff in the film seems to be broadly accurate of what happened.

Thought so. Wasn't sure about the implication that JFK's hit was a mob job either, I think that is one of the less favoured scenarios with the back-and-to-the-left experts, although not ruled out.

Noodle Lizard

Quote from: Monsieur Verdoux on January 03, 2020, 01:23:45 AM
The only feasable explanation I can imagine is that De Niro is not supposed to look like the young De Niro, but the young Frank Sheeran. Hence why they change his eye colour also. But the tech is unconvincing either way

And he looks nothing like Frank Sheeran anyway. They'd have had better luck deepfaking Roger Moore onto Robert De Niro if that's what they were after (in fact, that's something I very much would like to see).

kngen

If you watch the In Conversation thingy with Scorsese and the three stars on Netflix, while he waxes lyrical about the 'amazing' de-aging technology, there's definitely a hint of 'not arsed, mate' about how accurate it is or the ages of actors compared to the parts they're playing in general, which would certainly explain 37-year-old Joe Pesci playing 21-year-old Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas - he seems to expect a fair bit of forgiveness on the part of the audience. But then, I suppose if you grew up watching golden age Hollywood movies with men in their 40s playing teenagers, it's probably doesn't seem that big a deal.

Lost Oliver

My thoughts in the form of a shit list:

The de-age thing didn't bother me as unbelievably I didn't even notice it, I just thought it was weird that a 50 year old man was being called 'boy'. I honestly had no idea - thought it was a bad make-up job
They should've cast people who were right for part - given it a bit more fire. Even if they wanted De Niro for the last bit they could've used a different actor for the early days
Things like this don't normally consume me but it really took me out of the film
The benefit for Frank was dull AF. Just felt like a load of old men talking to one another - there were just no tension
Way too long - could've easily cut 90 minutes from it. And this is coming from a person who loves long slots with lots of dialogue and not very much happening on the surface
Pesci wasn't given enough to do and not once did I feel threatened by him
Pacino - not believable
I didn't like any of the characters - not that you need to be able to like them but you need to be able to care about them in some way - see Sopranos
There was no sense of urgency at any stage in the film - maybe that was the point as someone detailed above so i'm happy to concede on that one
When I saw them tipping the taxis into the water all I could think about was how much money that cost to shoot. All that waste too
There was very little humour in the whole thing, the jokes that were there felt forced
I feel a dick for banging on about the age thing but ultimately the whole thing felt miscast
Agree with NL about Once Upon a Time in America
I wasted my Sunday evening