Brian Formo’s review published on Letterboxd:
The Irishman is a monster of a movie. It deals with memory in a way that is very detached from its beginnings. This isn't "as far bask as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster" because our looking back is via an old man whose daughters won't visit him in the retirement community he'll die in. The only feeling that Frank (Robert De Niro) has is loss and he can't even admit the grief that he's caused himself by always following orders. In its heart, Martin Scorsese's opus is about three friends and the one who's caught in the middle. Frank is in between lifelong allegiances to the man who made him a gangster (Joe Pesci) and the man who made him a Teamster, Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). And though it was murky before, the indirect line from the mafia to the local unions was made a freeway completely open for business for all when Hoffa spends a few years in jail for fraud, creates a life-altering fork in the road for all three; Frank can no longer have an allegiance to both men because business is too good for the mafia with the new guy and Hoffa is too attached to his previous power status to not put up a fight for re-election.
It's this middle section of Scorsese's epic film that's the most fascinating—the overlap of mafia and unions and the favors that extend all the way up to the presidency. Replace mafia and unions with corporations and lobbyists and you see that our system has always been corrupted by outside forces of money and influence to keep power in the monied hands of those who shouldn't have the power. And The Irishman sings the highest notes in this middle section (when I say middle it's like 2.5 hours, haha) because Pacino and Pesci are absolutely brilliant. As Hoffa, Pacino gets to stuff his drawer full of rules that set him off—people being more than 10 minutes late, people wearing shorts to a meeting, always hosting the henchman in his home so there's no paper trail of them staying in a hotel where deeds are taken out, etc—that show that though he is corrupt he does have some guiding principles that keep him from freeing up the pension coffers for everyone's mitt in the cookie jar. We have more insight of Hoffa's home life, chiefly his interactions with his wife (Welker White) and his son (Jesse Plemons), than we ever get from Frank's wife and children (Anna Paquin uses the silent treatment as his adult daughter). And the opposite of the gregarious and larger than life Hoffa, Pesci's Russell keeps his cards to his vest and Pesci's performance is more subdued, never reaching a boil, but still harboring disappointments in others for not being able to keep things close to the vest as he does. While Pacino excels at playing his role the way we’d expect, Pesci goes opposite of his loud clowning here. Both performances are great but Pesci’s is unexpected and shows measured growth, as well.
Pacino and Pesci are two sides of a coin. And since Frank is merely the thumb that flips the coin, De Niro oddly never registered for me; he is the ultimate "yes man" just as a mobster fixer as opposed to a corporate lackey. His motivations have long left his memory, his actions are all that he recalls, and his personal life isn't lined with anything extra. This makes The Irishman a very reactive film, reacting to the energy and deeds that are brought to Frank by others. But it also makes for an ending that—though it grapples with time and aging—doesn't hit me with the same gut punch as Frank choosing which side he's more allegiant to. The only major complaint I have about Scorsese's sprawling film is that the central character is as blank as the white walls that he paints with other's brains. I love every pit stop because it means there's another character that will bring life to the film. But the best pit stops are the literal pit stops for the wives of the women to smoke on the side of the road because Russell won't let anyone smoke in his car. This in of itself is also a reminder that though it's 3.5 hours this is the most entirely male driven of all of Scorsese's gangster films. The wives are forgotten, the daughters don't speak up.
Ultimately, this is the rare gangster film where all the side-pulling of the two alpha males (Pacino and Pesci) directs the larger road map of not just Frank's life but of American labor. This is a film about power that's told via a mechanism that, despite his kill count, is completely powerless. And how lonely and isolating that can be. This isn't a flew-too-close-to-the-sun tale of youth like Goodfellas, it is simply a massive "it is what it is" admission of overall powerlessness.