The Irishman

THE GIST: By chance, Frank Sheeran, a regular Irish truck driver, meets Russell Bufalino, an Italian mob bigwig, who immediately takes a liking to him and decides to take him under his wing. Their relationship blossoms through decades that will see Sheeran rise in stature both withing the mafia ranks and as a personal assistant to powerful teamsters' leader Jimmy Hoffa.

When The Irishman, a long gestating Martin Scorsese project, was first announced, rumors about it being a shoo-in at the following Oscars ceremony started swirling immediately.

The film's preemptive potential as an awards magnet (before anyone had even seen it!) was all the more worrisome, as far as I'm concerned, because it was produced and distributed by Netflix. The streaming giant has been trying really hard to win big awards -- primarily Academy Awards -- first by distributing Alfonso Cuarón's Roma, and now with this movie, in order to boost its cachet and attract more talent.

I don't have any problems with those two goals, except that Netflix is interested in showing movies primarily to its online subscribers. The theater distribution rules followed by all traditional studios for a film to be eligible for any Oscar are, to put it mildly, a hindrance to Netflix. For that reason, they've been doggedly trying to shorten the theatrical window of a movie to the extreme (they are adamant that it be no more than 3 weeks) and they don't really do wide distributions either.

Now, it's true that some (maybe most) movies only really last in theaters about 3 weeks before they're replaced by newer releases, but some theaters live on longer lasting or older releases, and at any rate the shorter the theatrical window the smaller their revenue stream and the audience's chance of seeing a movie on the big screen, where it's meant to be watched.

Netflix and its supporters in the industry like to tout that Netflix is able to reach a wider audience all over the world than a movie could hope to reach be being shown in theaters, but I find that argument weak and misleading. Sure, not everyone lives near a movie theater and the cost might be a deterrent for others, but then again not everyone has a Netflix subscription. If they don't have it and don't live near a theater, they don't get to see the movie at all. Furthermore, all movies released in theaters eventually are shown on the small screen, available to an even wider audience. Netflix's movies will likely never be broadcast by any other channel, thereby reducing, not increasing, their footprint.

Anyway, in the end not only did Netflix not get the avalanche of Oscars it expected to receive with The Irishman, in spite of its pedigree; but it ended up being completely shut out and went home empty handed. And it wasn't because the movie industry rebelled against its tactics, but rather because, apologies to Scorsese, the movie just isn't very good.

The acting is great, as one would expect from actors of the caliber of Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci; and the sets, costumes, and cinematography are magnificent. However, the visual effects that were touted as one of its main selling points, because of their revolutionary rejuvenating results, are, to put it mildly, distracting.

I most closely would compare it to the 3D craze: a gimmick that ultimately deters from the full enjoyment of the film. Sure, without the newly created technology Scorsese would have had to hire two or three sets of actors to play the same role at different stages of life, but that's how every director always got around the problem, and the audience always understood the shifts (think back to The Godfather).

Ultimately, it's not that the VFX are badly rendered or risible, it's just that they only really affect the face of the actors. Their bodies are unaffected by the visual effect but not by age. A man moves differently when he's 20 from when he's 50 from when he's 70. It's natural and our brains know how to interpret those movements. So when we see De Niro in his war uniform fighting in Italy, he's playing a 20 year old man who moves like a 70 year old man, and it's a bit jarring. You can't trick the brain. And it's not just the movements, but also the build of the body under the clothes. It never changes, even though one would expect it to.

The other problem, frankly, is that the movie is really way too long. It clocks in at 3 and a half hours and while I don't mind long movies if the runtime is justified, here, in spite of the director showing us a tale that unfolds over many decades, it just feels endless.

THE BOTTOM LINE: I love Scorsese's work and this is not a bad movie, it's just not one of his best and it's really too long. And I'm glad it didn't win many awards based on its pedigree alone because it wouldn't have been fair.

Grade: 7