I knew I wasn't going to love this. Martin Scorsese fare is rarely even moderately enjoyable to me. But it is one of the most championed contenders for Academy Best Picture this year, and as a Netflix original, it's already available for streaming. I started early in the evening, because at 209 minutes, it's the longest mainstream feature in decades.
Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), a Philadelphia trucker, gets into '50s organized crime, including "painting houses" with the blood of the homeowners, despite quiet disapproval by his wife and daughter (played in adulthood by Anna Paquin). After helping him escape a charge, his defense attorney (Ray Romano) introduces him to crime lord Russell Buffalino (an oddly placid Joe Pesci), who in turn connects him with Teamsters Union pres Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). Sheeran and Hoffa stay close for about 20 years, which is not a particularly good thing when the latter is infamous....
Infamous enough, in fact, to make this the first Scorsese pic based on an ostensibly true story involving someone I'd heard of before. That made me feel a little more justified in watching: I could learn more about historic events people might discuss around me, albeit with the warning that the story's highlight is contested.
Unfortunately, I have trouble maintaining attention for that long, perhaps especially when there's far more dialog than action. And it's not pleasant dialog; it almost matched another recent swear count with the F-word alone. There are a number of slow moments, for realism rather than tension, which might have worked better in Scorsese's early days. I wound up multitasking, occasionally checking the screen and, yes, missing a few key details. Perhaps I would have done better to split the viewing over two days, but I wanted to get the darn thing over with.
Partly I was tuning it out because I felt like I'd seen the movie before. It's definitely counting on nostalgia for Goodfellas, which I always saw as an inferior Godfather imitation. Partly I have a hard time caring what happens when the most focal characters are monsters liable to murder each other. Sheeran may be a hit man with a heart, but he's no Leon the Professional. His hate-on for Jews and Kennedys does nothing to endear me either.
Oh, and you know how people were itching to see De Niro and Pacino together before Heat came out? If you ask me, they shouldn't play characters on the same side. They're just too darn similar.
I can tell that a lot of work and skill went into TI, and not just with the digital de-aging. The actors are as deft as they ever were. For some aspects, tho, I wish either more work or less had been done. For example, we're treated to an artsy line forecast screen like in The Favorite, only with the text entered gradually. I never really got the point of that practice, and here I don't recall seeing more than one instance. Did Scorsese abandon a plan and forget to clean up all the evidence? Or did I just not look at the right times?
If I recommend one 2019 biopic about a real mafioso, it'll be The Traitor. I rather hope this isn't Scorsese's second Best Picture.
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