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with mobsters as needed.
Frank becomes Hoffa’s unofficial
sometime bodyguard and a close friend:
each man is welcomed into the other’s
family, absorbed into whatever warmth
is there. It’s not until the movie’s end
that you understand how golden this
time was, for both of them. If women
mostly drift around the periphery of
The Irishman—Hoffa’s wife Josephine
is played by Welker White; Frank’s
wife Irene by Stephanie Kurtzuba—
they’re also the near-invisible network
that keeps the men going. And the
most defiant force in The Irishman, one
that pits the three male characters in a
stubborn and destructive triangle, is a
woman, Frank’s daughter Peggy, played
as a girl by Lucy Gallina and as a teenager
and grown woman by Anna Paquin.
Peggy is a sensitive soul who knows
what a bully her father is; she keeps her
distance, and it pains him. But if Peggy
despises her father, she recoils from
Pesci’s Russell. With no kids of his own,
Russell longs to earn her affection: in
one of the movie’s most searing scenes,
he presents the young Peggy with a
Christmas gift—ice skates, plus a gener-
ous chunk of cash—that repulses rather
than delights her. Her disdain crushes
him, only reinforcing the one behavior
that works for him: bullying. His life has
no meaning unless he’s in control.
Hoffa, garrulous and avuncular and
gruffly kind, also adores Peggy, and
she loves him back, seeing him, with
at least partial accuracy, as a champion
of the little guy—not as the kind of
man who, like Frank or Russell, might
crush that guy under his boot. Paquin
is wonderful here: she turns Peggy’s
disgust and revulsion into a kind of
bristly radiance. No wonder she’s one
of the most powerful characters in the
movie, albeit one with relatively few
lines. Both Frank and Russell see how
easily Hoffa’s charm works on her;
how could they not resent it? What’s
coming is a betrayal of Shakespearean
proportions, and it’s a daughter’s love—
or withholding of that love—that helps
set off its destructive vibrations.For the FirSt 2½ hours of its 3½-
hour runtime, The Irishman is clever
and entertaining, to the point where
you may think that’s all it’s going to be.
But its last half hour is moving in a way
that creeps up on you, and it’s then that
you see what Scorsese was working
toward all along: a mini-history of
late–20th century America—and its
machismo—as filtered through the
eyes of a small-time guy who needs
to believe in his own importance and
capacity for decency.
The Irishman is a ghost twin to an-
other Scorsese movie, one that also
featured De Niro and Pesci: the 1990
Goodfellas. In places it has the same
freewheeling jauntiness, though not
nearly as much macho swagger. Guys
like the ones we meet in Goodfellas
live in the bluntness of their pres-
ent. Today’s virile, angry energy is all
that matters. Who cares what happens
tomorrow?
But The Irishman, digging deep into
strata of betrayal and regret and loss,
is affecting in a way Goodfellas is not.
An old man couldn’t have made that
movie, just as a younger one couldn’t
have made this one. The Irishman is all
about the tomorrow that a young man
with power never has to think about, a
tomorrow that’s here before you know
it. The world is his—until it isn’t. □Not-so-
good fellas
The faces behind the grim
story of The IrishmanRUSSELL BUFALINO
Known as “the quiet don,”
Bufalino (Pesci) was allegedly
recruited by the CIA to spy on Cuba
before the Bay of Pigs landings.
He was convicted in 1982 of
conspiracy to kill a witness.FRANK SHEERAN
Sheeran (De Niro), whose
nickname gives the movie its
title, was a Teamsters official
and Philly Mob associate.
When interviewed for the book,
he offered confessions to a
string of Mafia-related murders,
including Hoffa’s, the veracity of
which remains in question.JIMMY HOFFA
Hoffa (Pacino), longtime
president of the Teamsters
union, spent four years in
jail for crimes including mail
fraud and bribery before
being pardoned by President
Nixon. He disappeared
in 1975, and his death
remains one of the most
famous unsolved mysteries.
—Alejandro de la Garza