Hitting the mark
Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro are back on top form as they make a return to the mobster genre
THE IRISHMAN
Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Anna Paquin, Jesse Plemons, Harvey Keitel
We’re heading into winter, which means the first feverish whispers of Oscar season are upon us — and this month’s bounty of serious, starry- eyed prestige films make that quite clear. None of them, however, are bigger or more swaggering than Martin Scorsese’s long- awaited return to the gangster film genre: a meaty, monumental underworld epic spanning several decades in the life of Frank Sheeran ( De Niro), the Irish- American WWII veteran and labour union official who came to work as a hitman for Pennsylvania’s notorious Bufalino mafia family. This may look like Scorsese back in the realm of Goodfellas, with De Niro in the kind of form he hasn’t attempted this century, but it has its own contemplative, near- spiritual air. Even at a whopping 3 ½ hours, it’s entirely immersive. 8 November