The good and thenot so good in Scorsese's The Irishman

Our cultural appetite for great movies about the mob/gangsters/organized crime of almost any era remains forever unsated, with Martin Scorsese's The Irishman (2019, Netflix) the latest entry - and one of the best, though by no means a perfect movie. MS, basing his movie on a book by Charles Brandt (and screenplay by Stevn Zaillian) is clearly working in the great tradition of the extremely long feature (or multiple-edition feature) with the members of the Pantheon being Coppola (Godfather movies, at least the first 2), David Chase (Sopranos, 7 seasons!), and Scorsese himself (Goodfellas). One difference between the Irishman and these others: This movie feels about an hour too long at 3.5 hours; the others left us wanting (up to a point) and getting more. To take the negatives first, The Irishman - the story of a Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) who rises from a trucker who skins a little off the top by stealing and unloading some of his freight to become a mob assassin (as the film wry calls is, "painting houses") to a top-level associate of the mobbed-up union boss Jimmy Hoffa - aptly and deftly delineates Sheeran's rise through the chambers of the underworld, but it almost completely lacks context: We see nothing of his childhood or his parents and almost nothing of his married life or his personal. His rise to prominence seems scripted and foreordained; there's a big difference between stealing some sides of beef and killing a man in cold blood, but we don't see any hesitation, remorse, or regret about this dramatic change in his life, from thief to killer. I know including such material would make this movie even longer, but maybe it should have been in two parts? Hoffa is a leading character, and the movie offers its own theory on his demise, which is kind of obvious though I won't give it up here, but I found Al Pacino's portrayal to be off the mark: His Hoffa is an eccentric, sometimes bumbling tyrant; I think, no matter how weakened he was by the end of his reign, he still has to be portrayed as someone formidable and fearsome. All that said, there are some tremendous strengths in The Irishman as well, not the least of which is it did hold our interest over its long span and its multilayered narration (3 strands of time). There's plenty of action, but none feels gratuitous, and by far the greatest part of the film involves the long private conversations among the key players, the 3rd by Joe Pesci as Russell Buffalino: There are many long confidences in which the characters speak in euphemisms and in code, a means of expression generated no doubt by years in fear of surveillance. Particularly great are the asides among characters as the dinner in Frank's honor, as the various forces plan to push Hoffa out of the picture. Also fantastic: the art direction and costuming, beautifully evoking the look and feel of this era and this culture without ever feeling overdone or over the top (Goodfellas was similar; so for that matter is the current Netflix series The Crown). All told definitely a film worth seeing; probably worth the $ and the trouble to see it on a full screen, if you can stand the 3.5-hour length; otherwise, it plays well at home, too.