Digitally De-Aged Robert DeNiro Is Up To Some Mob Shenanigans In The Trailer For ‘The Irishman’
This looks incredible.
Ever since Mean Streets, released some 46 years ago, Martin Scorsese has been honing the art of the mob film.
He’s had other projects too, of course — Silence, his masterpiece, is a rumination on faith, suffering and the great absence of God.
But it is with the gangster melodrama that he has made his most arresting epics. Think Goodfellas. Think the deeply underrated, deeply barmy Casino, which opens with Robert DeNiro’s flaming corpse floating over Nevada Neon. And think The Departed, an unbearably stressful look at rats and moles that memorably ends with a real-life rat running across the screen.
Well, now Scorsese has returned to the genre that made him famous with The Irishman, a three and a half-hour long, multi-million dollar epic that follows the intersecting tales of Jimmy Hoffa (played by Al Pacino) and Frank Sheeran (DeNiro).
Based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses, the film is set to jump through time, following Sheeran and Hoffa as they evolve from sparky young men to increasingly corrupt mob figures. Of course, those who know the real-life fate of Hoffa will be able to guess how this one ends, which is, uh, not happily.
Given the scope of the film, Scorsese has dipped his toe into the world of digital de-aging. So, despite the time jumps, Sheeran and Hoffa will be played by DeNiro and Pacino throughout, with the actors undergoing a CGI makeover to help them play younger men.
That makes The Irishman one of the most tech-heavy movies that Scorsese has made since Hugo, his anachronistic children’s movie that serves as a love letter to the power of cinema.
Watch the full trailer for The Irishman below. The film will hit Netflix on November 27, and screen at the New York Film Festival this week, so early word from the critics will be out real soon.