I had never heard of Henry Hill when I first saw Goodfellas and I thought it was the greatest movie I'd seen in my life. I had no way of comparing it to reality.

Scorsese makes it real, Henry Hill's life wasn't as glamorous as in Goodfellas, he was just a low level guy.

The same with Rosenthal and Casino.

I assume all movies are inaccurate. Even if every detail is presented accurately, there's still the matter of what gets left out. They'll do what they have to to make a good story.

The opening scene is pure Scorsese; a tracking shot moves down a long corridor, sailing past a religious statue, pop music on the soundtrack (In the Still of the Night, by the Five Satins).

One day I was flipping through channels and I caught a news special about finally finding Hoffa. I couldn't believe it. A minute or so in I found out it was Bruce Almighty. Wtf

I have to say I agree. I do not know how accurate the Irishman really is or not but I believe as long as Sheeran’s story is in the realm of possibility and realism without any extremely glaring inaccuracies then I believe that it makes no difference.

You have seen it? It has been getting impressive feedback all across the board. Is it well deserved in your opinion?

No Revis it was mentioned in a review. I was looking for the songs in the soundtrack.

Ok. I know there are some theaters premiering it. But it looks like there won’t be a big release from the movie theater chains.

Callback to Mean Streets. I notice in the trailer Sheeran and his wife are standing in the classroom watching their daughter speak just like Nicky Santoro and his wife watch little Nicky in Casino.

There’s probably a voiceover in that scene too. Just like casino.

We need one scene with Russell Buffalino holding binoculars and saying "peak a boo you fucks you".

That de-aging software has Pacino looking a little like Michael there.

It was ok a little long but wasnt suffering threw it. Wasnt Mean Streets, Goodfellas good but wasnt bad either.

Just watched The Irishman. Superb! A bit long and it drags just a little in some places, but so, so good otherwise. Another classic in the vein of the GF, Casino, and Goodfellas.

I wonder though if some of the historical scenes and references such as the Teamsters, Hoffa, Cuba, Gallo, even Kennedy, etc. will be lost on younger viewers.

Of course, from the opening scene with In the Still of the Night I was captured.

I haven't had the time to watch it probably Saturday.

Did anyone else get a touch of sentimentalism whenever
the song ‘Pretend you don’t see her at all’ came on?

Definitely a nod to the Goodfellas scene with that song.

I did. Was also nice to see Welker White played Jo Hoffa after she portrayed Lois "The Babysitter" Byrd in GOODFELLAS. A lot of Scorsese alum make cameo's in this film.

After reading everybodies reviews i'm excited for this..

The movie left out a very relevant fact: Frank Fitzsimmons, who was acting Teamsters president while Hoffa was in prison for jury tampering, made a deal with Nixon: the President would commute Hoffa's seven year sentence with the proviso that Hoffa had to stay away from union politics until 1980, otherwise he'd go back to prison. Hoffa, desperate to get out, agreed.

He then was in demand for media interviews, where he talked up prison reform, but always put in bad words for Fitz and Fitz's Mob ties. He also made noises about wanting to recapture the Teamsters' presidency. Unlike the hard-driving, autocratic, workaholic Hoffa, Fitzsimmons was fat, lazy and was more interested in playing golf than tending to union business. But, Teamsters Local officers liked him because he gave them far more leeway than the hyper-controlling Hoffa. And, while Hoffa played ball with the Mob, he was courageous and fearlessly independent, while Fitz was compliant with them and paid little attention to the gigantic Central States Pension Fund, which was the Mob's loan bank.

Neither Fitz nor the Mob wanted Hoffa back in charge; and his bad-mouthing Fitz' Mob ties was a direct threat to them. Even Chuckie, who was a virtual son to Hoffa, said he was "suicidal." RIP Jimmy.

Good point TB. In Jack Nicholson's Hoffa, Hoffa was all surprised by that arrangement with Nixon which was absurd because he would have had to agree to it before his release. But in The Irishman Hoffa does reference $5,000 paid to Nixon's campaign.

Another part they could have done a better job of explaining was the murder of Colombo. Unless you're a Board member, a viewer probably wouldn't understand why Colombo was even in the movie or Gallo's part in his murder.

In "In Hoffa's Shadow" by Jack Goldsmith, Chuckie's stepson, he says Chuckie toldl him he delivered $1 million in cash from Fitz to a man in a dark hotel room who he believed was John Mitchell, then chairman of the Committee to Re-Elect the President.


Point well taken, Oli. Now there's considerable doubt that the Colombo shooting was ordered by Gallo.

Yes. It's entertainment. It's not as if the studio billed "The Irishman" as "The Never-Before Revealed True Story of How an Irish Hitman Killed Jimmy Hoffa for the Mafia." It takes plenty of liberties to tell its story. For example:
--JFK didn't need the Mob's help in winning Illinois in 1960, nor did the Mob have any reason to help him. The Kennedys had been at war with Hoffa and the Mob since 1957, and the Teamsters supported Richard Nixon for President in 1960.
--Joe Kennedy, JFK's father, was not a rumrunner during bProhibition, nor was he close to Mobsters.
--The Mob cooperated with the CIA in plots to kill Castro. But they did not collect and deliver (via Sheeran) guns to the Bay of Pigs invaders, who were armed by the CIA and Dept. of Defense. David Ferrie was not involved in that, although, in "I Heard You Paint Houses," Sheeran said Hoffa told him to use a private plane to deliver three rifles to Ferrie in New Orleans.
--Sheeran did not kill Crazy Joe Gallo.
--The FBI now believes Chuckie was not in the car with Hoffa for his last ride.
--Information about Sheeran's life is at best sketchy, and there's a lot of controversy about what he told others about his life before he died.

I loved it.That they tampered with historical accuracy didn't bother me at all. Everything in the film was plausible if not factual. Do I believe that Sheeran killed Hoffa? Probably not. But did a guy LIKE Sheeran kill Hoffa? You bet. Same for Gallo. Ludicrous. But a guy LIKE Sheeran was a shooter. A career criminal. A thug. A murderer. Was Hoffa cremated? Who knows? COULD he have been cremated? Absolutely. Especially given the mob's association with a lot of the old independent Italian funeral homes. So, like I said, it's plausible if not factual.

The CGI didn't bother me. What I did notice was that their bodies betrayed them more than their faces. They might have looked fiftyish at points, but they all moved every bit of 75 or 80. The scene outside the grocery store is especially telling. Sheeran would have been a young man there. When DeNiro is stomping the grocer, he looks like an old man kicking a cat in the ass to chase him off the lawn. Just go back to Goodfellas at the bar when he's stomping Batts. DeNiro was in his mid-forties there. And he moved like it. Sheeran would have been younger in the grocery scene than DeNiro was in Goodfellas. Enough said about that because, overall, in film sometimes you just have to look the other way sometimes.

Now, the acting was brilliant. No one's gonna argue that. I've read that a lot of people on social meeting have called it "boring," and I think I know why. Most people on social media are younger. This film is a gangster movie but only to a degree. The overall theme of the film is about aging with loss and regret and guilt. Jesus, is there anything sadder than a lonely old man picking out his own casket? But sometimes people die alone, especially people who made terrible life choices, like Sheeran and company. So how's a 20 or 30 year old gonna relate to that? Well, I turned 60 in October and I get it. Boy, do I get it.

Oh, one more thing. I really like how Pacino looked at the peak of Hoffa's career. That's how an older Michael Corleone SHOULD have looked.

PB, you're right about that movie's younger viewers. Remember that episodes of Two and a Half Men when Charlie is watching Jaws with Jake? Jake says that we're 40 minutes into the film and haven't even seen the shark yet. I can imagine him watching The Irishman and wondering where that opening song came from.

In any case, a great movie that completes that Trilogy: Goodfellas, Casino, and now The Irishman.

By the way, I thought the background theme of Peggy's estrangement from her father (and her avoidance of Bufalino) was so unique in a film such as this. Her sixth sense told her that they were not all they appeared to be.

Absolutely, Oli. That's another silly criticism that I read. Some folks are offended that she only had one line in the film as an adult. That it was a "boys club" film. Well, it was. So what? There aren't a million "girl power" films out there? And her silence spoke volumes. Her expressions and body language were brilliant.

Agree with everything you say, but especially that. I cringed watching that scene. Even when I saw the trailer, my reservations weren't so much with the facial de-aging but the fact that the actors body movements were betraying them. As you said, they moved and carried themselves like old men.

In saying that, how good does Harvey Keitel look for his age? He's older than De Niro, Pesci and Pacino but he carries it a lot better.

It's funny you mention the scene in Goodfellas where De Niro puts the boots to Frank Vincent. It's not what he did, but the way he did it. It's small things like that which make a great actor.

My brother (who's more of a film buff than me) and I always got a kick out of how cool De Niro looked in that scene.