No he died from heart trouble at age 80.
My take… it’s good. It’s a swan song… but…
This should have been Jesse Plemmons star turn and he should have played Sheeran. The de-aging only worked on DeNiro to make his age nebulous in every scene… was he 40 in WW2? In their meet scene Pesci keeps calling DeNiro “kid”… they look the same age? It’s just face vague-ing not de-aging.
You cast Plemmons who actually looks kind of like Sheeran–Sheeran wasn’t well-spoken, he’s a mumbly brute…which is more in Plemmons wheel-house.
I think it was a huge missed opportunity that I wish Scorese had taken. I get that DeNiro was the one who wanted to get this made but…he should not have played the lead.
Never did have great eye/hand coordination. 
Thanks.
at the start of Goodfellas the De Niro character Jimmy Conway was supposed to be 30 but De Niro was 47 when the movie came out.
As far as a former mafia guy bragging about his exploits that may not be true, Henry Hill always said he never killed anyone but people doubt that claim since he worked with the mob for over 20 years.
Of course. Hill was in witness protection (until they threw him out of it) so wouldn’t want to confess to any murders. In any case, Sheeran would be the opposite case since no one apparently ever suspected him of any murders until he claimed to have committed not one but two of the most famous hits in history.
As Joseph Gordon-Levitt said to Bruce Willis (in which the latter appropriately played an older version of the former’s character, without relying on CGI to down-age Willis), it’s time for these older actors to “do what old men do, and die.”
I don’t mean literally, but yeah, this movie needed younger actors up-aged through makeup where necessary, not old actors who couldn’t act young to save their lives. And seriously, two of the most well-known Italian American actors of all time playing an Irishman and a Pennsylvania Dutch. Was that really necessary?
Netflix is making like it won’t give this movie a wide-release as an effort to play hardball with theater chains. The truth is, it just wouldn’t do that well and would become an unmistakable box office bomb. How the hell did they spend so much money on this? Was it the CGI?
Anyway, 6 out of 10 for me.
I watched this movie and thought, “Yep, that’s a Scorsese flick.” I enjoyed it, but it was the same old thing as all the other flicks he’s made.
It was nominated for some Golden Globes including best picture drama
Yes, much of the very high cost was due to the extensive CGI.
I think that whatever we saw was tailored for the medium. If it got a theatrical release it would have been a whole different animal. I have said before it is really a rushed mini series.
What I don’t get, is why opinions here on the SDMB are so different from everywhere else.
In the rest of the world, it seems that close to 100% of professional movie critics liked it, and the audience rating is about 85%. Here, it seems that 85% disliked it.
Why?
Is it that people here are so much smarter and more perceptive than both movie critics and the general public?
Is it that people here are so much dumber than both movie critics and the general public, and are unable to see the subtler aspects of the movie?
Is it that people here are want to appear much smarter and more perceptive than both movie critics and the general public, and they think they will achieve that by being extra cynical and negative?
I like what I like and dislike what I dislike. It never has to do with posturing and in this case it has nothing to do with smarts or lack of, or perceptiveness. It exclusively has to do with personal taste and grabs me emotionally and what leaves me cold. This left me cold.
Maybe there is a selection bias here to people who respond in similar ways. Lots of people liked it. You did. Accusing those who don’t of lying about what they think though, in order to impress pixels like you? That is a bit much. Smilie does not change that.
The worst part is, I can’t tell if you’re joking. I mean, I wish you were, but then I can’t tell anymore. My sarcometer is busted from overexposure.
Did anyone else not realize who the titular Irishman was until, like the last half hour or so of the movie? Because the script didn’t seem to really highlight the main characters Irish heritage, even when Kennedy and the Irish were getting badmouthed by Hoffa, and I don’t remember him being specifically referred to as Irish until Joe Pesci’s character gave him the ring, and, again, De Niro is one of the two best known Italian American actors now living, and quite possibly in cinematic history. I actually found out Jimmy Hoffa was Pennsylvania Dutch (and not Irish) while checking wiki just to be sure that he wasn’t supposed to be “the Irishman” (going off the possibility that he was Protestant, and so badmouthing Kennedy et al for being Catholic, rather than for being Irish). The casting was just that bad.
Me as well. It made me feel sad, thinking back to De Niro and Pacino in films like Casino and The Godfather respectively, and then seeing them in this. It’s not that they’ve grown old, it’s that they’ve grown old but for some reason Scorsese just could move past them and so had to cast them as men aged roughly on par with who they were in those earlier, better films.
Indeed. I quite literally laughed out loud during the scene where DeNiro beats up the grocer.
I think there is at least some element of “lifetime achievement” phenomenon, where late-career work receives undue praise, reflecting a prior body of work. This is a BIG film by a supposedly GREAT director, w/ multiple supposedly GREAT actors - therefore, the film MUST be GREAT!
But I also suspect there is at least some degree of contrariness (is that a word) around these parts, by folk who like to consider themselves independent thinkers.
And I agree, tho I was aware of the title, I never really thought of DeNiro as being Irish, other than when dialogue specifically mentioned it.
It’s nothing nefarious GreenWyvern, some people just didn’t like it.
It reminded me of the late Star Trek films in some ways. If this was made my Martin Jones, starring Al Smith and Robert Washington with the exact same performances, I don’t think it would have gotten the reviews that it did. It seemed like a C- film, but one we seen done better before. We loved the actors, loved the plot, and felt a fair amount of nostalgia, especially knowing we weren’t going to see our friends back together again. It gets a lot of benefits of the doubt due to that.
But YMMV, - obviously does - and that’s fine.
DeNiro beating up the grocer took me out of it. He just moved like a brittle old man. I loved these actors in much of what they have done, and as such this movie is excellent in that it is a good argument for why these guys should hang it up, at least hang up playing tough guys. (None of this applies to Joe Pesci, who was consistently excellent). This movie with actors younger than 76-79 could have been really good - it is still a Scorsese movie, with many of his special touches. But even then, that’s not a sure thing - the characters were not written in way that made you care about them, unlike, say, The Godfather movies, or Goodfellas. Perhaps because these were real, historical people. But then Tarantino showed that you can make a perfectly engrossing movie featuring “real” people. And yes, Tarantino wrote alternate history. But then so did this movie.
The grocer scene and the one at the waterside should have been more artistically shot. As Chaplin said: Close up for tragedy and long shot for comedy.
You can make anything you want happen on screen. You don’t have to film your 75 year old leading man in long shots in an action scene.
The distancing from the violence was DELIBERATE. It was done for a reason. Do you really think Scorsese doesn’t know how to film violence for maximum emotional effect… and for MINIMUM emotional effect? Have you not considered WHY he made that choice?
I told them once, I told them twice,
They would not listen to advice. 
This is NOT a standard gangster movie. This is deliberately NOT another Goodfellas, or Casino, or Godfather, or whatever. This is a movie satirizing and commenting on and undercutting the standard tropes of a gangster movie. You’re comparing apples with oranges.
A bit funny? It was hilarious… and DELIBERATELY so. Like a lot of other funny bits in the movie. Scorsese is taking standard gangster movie tropes and making fun of them, riffing on them, looking at them from the outside, showing the inherent ridiculousness of them.
But for all the humor, it’s a very serious and very moral movie. Instead of romanticizing gangsters like so many movies, it’s doing the exact opposite.