THE OLD MEN AND THE GUN (THE IRISHMAN)

Great filmmakers innovate.

In the silent era, with films like 'The Musketeers of Pig Alley', 'Birth of a Nation' and 'Intolerance', DW Griffith created the language of Hollywood cinema that studios would adopt in epic dramas for years to come.

Not long after Griffith, Sergei Eisenstein and his Soviet filmmaking contemporaries developed montage - using rapid fire editing and close-ups to fully exploit the emotional intensity of a scene.

With the help of Greg Toland's deep focus cinematography in 'Citizen Kane', Orson Welles discovered a way to imbue every person, every object, every movement with an even greater resonance.

Alfred Hitchcock's absorption of German expressionist and Soviet filmmaking styles and his eye for an arresting image helped create bravura set pieces and stunning Point of View shots that would dazzle audiences in thrillers like 'The 39 Steps', 'Sabotage', 'Rebecca', 'The Foreign Correspondent', 'Notorious', 'Rear Window', 'Vertigo' and 'Psycho'.

And we haven't the time to talk about the immense contribution of filmmakers like John Ford, Akira Kurosawa, Jean Luc Goddard, Francois Truffaut, Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman and Stanley Kubrick.

Few would argue that Martin Scorsese doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as all those great filmmakers.

A passionate cineaste, he has created some of the most compelling movies ever committed to film while pushing visual storytelling boundaries.

'Mean Streets' will always be remembered for the scene which has often been imitated, capturing the sensation of being drunk.

Scorsese and his cinematographer Kent L Wakefield achieved that by strapping a camera to Harvey Keitel.

The director would again mesmerise audiences with 'Taxi Driver'.

With its sinister and sleazy Bernard Herman score and his regular use of slow mo, Scorsese memorably conjured up a disturbing vision of a decaying New York.

The use of several cameras and black and white stock in his 1980 boxing biopic 'Raging Bull' gave its fight sequences an intimacy and authenticity, while the use of Hershey's syrup memorably created the illusion of blood dripping from the ropes of the ring.

When you mention 'Good Fellas', the first thing that springs to mind is that breathtaking and exquisitely choreographed tracking shot, as Ray Liotta's Henry Hill escorts his girlfriend, Lorraine Bracco's Karen from the sidewalk into a nightclub.

Scorsese's dynamic gangster film also benefitted from Thelma Schoonmaker's pulsating film editing - not least in its final act.

And then there's the swooping digital effects in 'Hugo' that catapulted the viewer through the streets of early 20th Century Paris.

When word got out in 2017 that Scorsese was deploying digital de-ageing technology in 'The Irishman' to shave years off his cast, many saw it as a typically bold move from a director still pushing the boundaries of cinema.

However there was also a degree of nervousness among his most devoted fans about whether the technology would actually be able to convincingly recreate younger versions of actors who were now in their 70s or 80s.

They needn't have worried.

Scorsese's movie is so well written, so well acted, so well shot and so well told, you simply forget the age of the actors playing younger men and you forgive the odd eerie look in the eyes of its cast.

Adapted by Steven Zallian from Charles Brandt's book 'I Heard You Paint Houses' about the Mafia hitman Frank Sheeran, Scorsese has been planning the movie for 12 years.

Long time collaborator Robert de Niro initially alerted him to the book but after undergoing a number of rewrites and difficulties reconciling Scorsese and de Niro's busy work schedules, the passage of time started to take its toll on the cast.

As time wore on, it becane clearer that if Scorsese was to have his dream cast, the ageing process would need to be somehow reversed with the help of digital technology.

The budget of 'The Irishman' spiralled from the $100 million initially earmarked by Mexican production company, Fabrica de Cone and Paramount to $159 million and eventually Netflix stepped in.

While the film has been given a limited three week cinema release before it is posted on the streaming platform, it is to Scorsese's credit that he has created a movie that isn't crafted with a smartphone and smart TV audience in mind.

'The Irishman' is every inch a movie made for the cinema as any other film he has made in his 55 year career.

The film begins in an old people's home in Philadelphia with a shot emulating the 'Good Fellas' tracking shot - albeit conducted at a much slower pace.

Rodrigo Prieto's camera creeps along the corridors past residents and nurses before eventually settling on de Niro's elderly Frank Sheehan, who is confined to a wheelchair and begins his narration direct to camera.

It is a bold, playful statement from Scorsese fron the outset as Frank recounts the tale of a car trip from Philadelphia to a wedding in Detroit via Ohio, taken with his second wife, Stephanie Kurtzuba's Irene and Joe Pesci's Mob fixer Russell Bufalino and his wife, Kathrine Narducci's Carrie.

The car journey is merely a frame to hang the real narrative of how Frank came to work for Russell and the north Philadelphia Mafia and then for Al Pacino's Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa.

Frank first encounters Russell at a truck stop while trying to fix his lorry's engine.

Soon, he is being successfully defended in court by the Mobster's cousin, Ray Romano's attorney Bill Bufalino after he enables Bobby Cannavale's Felix 'Skinny Razor' Di Tuilio to swipe prime steak from a lorry he drives.

After Frank refuses to name names, Russell rewards him by making him a trusted lieutenant in his crew despite his Irish blood.

Soon "the Irishman", as the Italian Mobsters call him, is extorting money for them and carrying out hits on those who transgress against Russell and his boss, Harvey Keitel's Angelo Bruno.

Bufalino eventually introduces Frank to Jimmy Hoffa and asks him to work alongside the union boss, helping undermine his rivals by firebombing their taxi cabs or rolling them into the harbour 

Frank and his family develop a friendship with Hoffa and his wife, Welker White's Josephine  which is every bit as close as his friendship with Russell.

Jimmy, however, suffers from insecurity about President John F Kennedy and his brother, the Attorney General Bobby.

He is also twitchy about Stephen Graham's Genovese crime family associate and Teamster official, Anthony Provenzano and this twitchiness increasingly creates friction with the Mafia.

Inevitably Frank comes under pressure from his Mob associates to choose between loyalty to Hoffa or loyalty to Bufalino.

Zallian's screenplay is a typically well crafted, impeccably researched period drama, with painstaking attention to detail.

Scorsese cannot resist bombarding his audience with information. Occasionally, he freeze frames incidental characters just to inform us of the grisly deaths that most of them suffered.

However the genius of 'The Irishman' is the way it riffs on the gangster genre, including Scorsese's own work, but at a pace that reflects the passage of time for the characters, the cast, the director and crew.

Gone is the hyperactive violence of 'Good Fellas'. 'The Irishman' replaces it with a more considered pace and style.

And while there are occasional camera sweeps, freeze franes and fast cuts, the three and a half hour running time enables Scorsese to spend more time framing the action to perfection and allowing his cast time to explore their characters and shoot the breeze, without ever losing the audience.

As you would expect from a Scorsese movie, the performances are uniformly good.

de Niro finally delivers the performance we have been craving for 22 years - imbuing Frank with a deference and deviousness to accompany the savage violence he occasionally metes out.

In many respects, Sheehan feels like the Philadelphia cousin of Jimmy 'The Gent' Conway, another Irishman working for the Mob who he portrayed in 'Good Fellas' - although Frank is a bit more conflicted.

Pacino, in his first ever Scorsese role, also turns in his best performance in years.

Hoffa enables Pacino to do his trademark ranting and raging but there is more to his depiction of the union boss than just that.

Pacino's performance is laced with tragedy, as Hoffa's stubborness and pettiness gets the better of him.

Keitel, Graham, Cannavale, Romano, Jesse Plemons as Hoffa's foster son Chuckie O'Brien, Kurtzuba, Narducci, White, Gary Barsarba as the Teamsters' Frank Fitzsimmons and Domenick Lombardozzi as the Genovese crime family boss Anthony Salerno all rise to the occasion.

However the standout performance comes from Joe Pesci after a nine year absence from our screens 

His restrained, calculating performance as Russell is more in the mould of Paul Sorvino's Mob boss Pauly in 'Good Fellas' and is a world away from the combustible Tommy De Vito in the same film or Nicky Santoro in 'Casino'.

A lot has been made of the fact that the female characters have little to say or do in 'The Irishman' and that is true.

Some critics have even attacked the film because Anna Paquin's Peggy Sheeran has only six lines of dialogue.

That, however, is missing the point.

Frank's daughter turns out to be the voice of conscience in the film by silently observing her father's violent conduct.

As a child, played by Lucy Gallina, she witnesses her father's rage and brutality as he throws a local shopkeeper through the glass door of his shop for shoving her and stamps on his hand.

That traumatic childhood incident has a profound effect on their relationship.

Peggy witnesses Frank leave the family home in the dead of night to carry out his deadly business.

Russell senses Peggy doesn't like him and she refuses to be bought off when he tries to buy her affection with money for candy or expensive Christmas gifts.

Her much warmer relationship with Hoffa only augments the tragedy that unfolds.

With a soundtrack compiled by Robbie Robertson featuring jazz, doo wop and early rockn'roll stars like Fats Domino, Glen Miller, Johnny Ray, Smiley Lewis and The Five Satins, Scorsese and Rodrigo Prieto take the time to get the period detail just right.

The decor of the houses is drab and the clothes are garish in the daylight but at night Prieto and Scorsese bathe their film in gorgeous reds, greens and gold in images that stir memories of the urban paintings of Edward Hopper.

Scorsese has crafted a melancholic meditation on the gangster genre and on ageing.

Refreshingly, not all its characters' lives end in a hail of gunfire. Some of the principal characters simply succumb to the ravages of old age and wither.

Building on this theme, the final shot is a clever twist on the last image of Francis Coppola's 'The Godfather Part II'.

Ultimately time and repeated viewings will determine how 'The Irishman' ranks amongst Scorsese's best films but there is no doubt that it is among his finest.

Like many of his best works, you will find yourself mulling over many of the themes and Zallian's coded dialogue which leaves the audience and characters to decipher the nuances of what their contemporaries are really saying.

Riddled with the weariness that comes with age and its characters' guilt, 'The Irishman' does for the gangster movie what 'Unforgiven' did for the Western - elegantly questioning the modus operandi of the gangster flick.

And like Eastwood's film, 'The Irishman' feels like it is giving its violent genre the last rites.

Catch it in your cinema, if you can but if you decide to watch it at home, devote the full 209 minutes to it instead of watching the film in instalments.

A film as cinematic as this needs to be savoured in one go - ideally on the biggest screen.

To do otherwise would be a crime.

('The Irishman' was released in the UK and Ireland on November 8, 2019)