‘The Irishman’ gets an A+ in moviemaking but flunks history

By Tom Siebert

From Al Capone to Don Corleone, Hollywood glamorized gangsters, depicting them as murderous wise guys who also happened to be family friendly good guys.

Then along came realistic filmmaker Martin Scorsese, whose movies such as “Goodfellas” and “The Departed” portrayed mobsters as vulgar, violent sociopaths for whom crime not only did not pay but often led to a ghoulish, ungodly death.

Now comes director Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” a sweeping, colorful, beautifully shot masterpiece that features acting titans Robert De Niro and Al Pacino as well as a genius supporting cast that includes Joe Pesci, Ray Romano, Harvey Keitel, Anna Paquin, Bobby Cannavale, and Arlington Heights native and hottest comedian in the country Sebastian Maniscalco.

The epic, elegiac film is an adaption of Charles Brandt’s book “I Hear You Paint Houses,” the self-told story of Frank Sheeran.

He was a Philadelphia meat truck driver who in the film becomes a Forest Gump-like character involved in practically every infamous incident in recent American gangland history, including the shooting deaths of United Mine Workers president Joseph Yablonski in 1969 and mobster “Crazy Joe” Gallo at a Manhattan clam bar in 1972.

Mr. De Niro, who should win his third Academy Award for his interpretation of Mr. Sheeran, is digitally aged from a young soldier fighting in World War II, to a middle-aged mafia hit man, to an infirm octogenarian seeking penance from a Catholic priest in a nursing care facility.

Mr. Pacino, as controversial Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa, turns in his finest performance since the tour de force of “Dog Day Afternoon.” (I know he won Best Actor for “Scent of a Woman” but that was the Academy making amends for overlooking his incandescent acting in “Serpico” and the first two “Godfather” films.)

And Mr. Pesci, who broke cinematic ground with Mr. De Niro in “Raging Bull,” plays Russell Bufalino, an avuncular mafia don whose syndicate commits its crimes in the Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia metro areas.

Oh, and everybody will love Ray Romano’s portrayal of amoral union attorney Bill Bufalino, who clears Mr. Sheeran after he is accused by the trucking company of theft.

Director Quentin Tarantino is known for hiding "Easter eggs" of obscure cultural references in his films. But Mr. Scorsese is pretty good at trivial pursuit in “The Irishman,” with his eclectic soundtrack and zooming Miami Beach shot that opened “The Jackie Gleason Show” in the 1960s, accompanied by The Great One’s composition “Melancholy Serenade.”

And in a particularly charming scene, Steven Van Zandt, he of “The Sopranos” and Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, sings “Spanish Eyes” as nightclub crooner Jerry Vale at a Teamster’s banquet.

Movies about real people often pose fact-checking challenges, dramatic license and liberties taken into account. But in a country crazed by conspiracy theories, it is important to debunk some of the assertions made in “The Irishman,” for the benefit of those who get their “history” from movies.

First of all, the film perpetuates the political myth that Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley and the mob stole the 1960 presidential election on behalf of Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.) by stealing votes and stuffing ballot boxes.

That allegation has never been proven, and even if it were, JFK would have still won the presidency without the 27 electoral votes from the state of Illinois. (He gained the votes of 303 electors, 33 more than the 270 needed to win.)

“The Irishman” also weaves together bits and pieces of the many discredited “plots” to assassinate President Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. The undisputed fact is that there is no evidence that anyone other than sniper Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in the assassination.

And the 1975 disappearance of Mr. Hoffa is still listed by the FBI as an unsolved mystery, notwithstanding the film’s imagination of the union boss’ fate.

“The Irishman,” now playing concurrently in a limited number of theaters and streaming on Netflix, has been deemed by some critics as the ultimate underworld film.

To me that means I will never have to watch another profanity-peppered, blood-spattered movie like this again.

For as artistically brilliant as the gangster genre can be, it is ultimately not good for my soul nor spiritual growth.