Rating: 2.5/5
Criterion Challenge 2022 | 24/52 | Made in the United States
When I was young, I thought house painters painted houses. What did I know?
The camera dollies down the hallway of a nursing home. Unlike every nursing home I’ve been to, these older folks have guests visiting them and smiles on their faces. The mirroring of the club introduction scene from Goodfellas is depressing. We finally make it to Frank Sheeran in a wheelchair, his distant eyes holding a history we’ll spend ages learning about.
In the 50s, Frank was a Teamster driving trucks in Philly. Then, he became a house painter. What’s a house painter? It’s someone who kills folks for the mob, painting the house red with a bullet in the back of the head.
We move through Frank’s history, how he became a house painter for Russell Bufalino, and eventually, worked for Jimmy Hoffa.
The de-aging looks like shit. For one, they’re all old men. They walk and talk like old men. Just because you paint some wrinkles off their faces or whatever doesn’t change their cadence. As I’ve said in other reviews, I watch plenty of movies with terrible effects, so I don’t care that much about it.
The book on which the movie is based is also full of spurious stories that Charles Brandt took at face value. Like Catch Me If You Can (another crock of shit), the history isn’t important if the story is entertaining.
But this movie isn’t interested in entertainment. It’s a meditation on aging, regret, and becoming obsolete. Ang Lee hinted at his fear of death with the hollow Gemini Man and its aging effects. Scorsese’s motivations don’t seem dissimilar.
It doesn’t help that I’m over mob stories. I get it — the mob is the American Dream personified, with all the ugliness it takes to be anything in the US. Here, we step deeper into the co-mingling of political corruption and mob success. Like the politician, the mobster has no authentic self — they create an image that reflects what we want to see and murder everything that contradicts it. We stick with the gangsters way after their heyday to feel all the regret and loss that comes with it.
The script has some jokes in it. They’re the same jokes you hear in every mob movie, but they’re pretty good.
The last 30 minutes is the movie. And I understand you need it all beforehand to get there. But do we need all three hours of it?
From a filmmaking perspective, the whole thing seems like a tremendous ordeal to piece together. The cast is huge and the locations are all over the place.
I didn’t hate this. It’s just not going to stick with me. Thankfully, Killers of the Flower Moon came out after this and has stuck with me. Scorsese’s still got it, when he isn’t making gangster flicks.
Siri, play “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac.