This article is from UBVIA.com
INTRODUCTION
To call ‘The Irishman‘ a gangster movie would be as reductive and misleading as calling ‘Raging Bull’ a boxing movie or ‘The Aviator’ a biopic. While those labels are not necessarily incorrect or misused, they are best employed as rough indications of the universe these stories take place in. Allow the terms gangster, boxing, and biographical, to simply provide a vaguely defined collection of rules in which the story presented to us will maneuver itself.
Firstly, let us briefly examine some of the details. ‘The Irishman’ stars Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, as Frank Sheeran, Jimmy Hoffa, and Russell Bufalino respectively. Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Paquin, Stephen Graham, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Jesse Plemons, and Harvey Keitel are just some of the actors in supporting roles.
Although the life and eventual disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa play a prominent part in the plot, they are not the primary concern here, nor what the film deals with in its totality. What Scorsese focuses on here is Frank Sheeran, a byproduct of the screenplay taking a cue from the book ‘I Heard You Paint Houses’, which was adapted for the movie.
