Martin Scorsese, 77, and still America’s greatest living filmmaker, shook up the year by claiming Marvel movies aren’t cinema. “What’s not there is revelation, mystery, or genuine emotional danger,” claimed the director, who supplies all that and more in what is not just the best film of 2019 but also an incendiary, indelible summation of a landmark career. The film reunites Scorsese with his peerless acting muses Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci nearly 25 years after they made Casino. It also brings in a live-wire Al Pacino as Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamsters leader who De Niro’s hit man, Frank Sheeran, is ordered to kill. A digital de-aging process allows the actors to play younger as the film spans decades of American history. But it’s not violence that brings them down — it’s debilitating age. That searing note of poetic justice makes The Irishman unique among Scorsese’s Mob films, from Goodfellas to The Departed, and earns a place in the cinematic canon.
