Kartikeyan Rao

Scorcese can’t seem to shrug off his obsession with his favourite Italo theme, but considering his roots, one grants that as a given. Since this is obviously his twist on the biographical narrative of the Teamsters, Jimmy Hoffa’s life and times and purported death at the hands of Frank Sheeran, it must be said that even as the first two don’t attract historical controversy, Hoffa’s cause of death (he’s still listed “missing”), is contentious having been stitched together from a book and myriad conspiracy theories. Talking about the acting, a director can’t stick with the same actors throughout a movie when the on-screen ages they’re portraying at various points of time don’t match their off-screen ones; no amount of make-up helps here. This is most discernible as you unfailingly notice that De Niro can’t literally walk the talk as his throwback scenes are stilted and laboured and his eyes don’t speak at all – they’re glassy throughout the movie. Of the others, Pesci looks gaunt, haggard and deathly old at any point in the film, although he renders a convincing performance. While none of the other actors go over the top, carrying off their charter well enough, only Pacino is in sublime form. For a biopic which isn’t fully corroborated by irrefutable facts, the movie suffers from an excessively lengthy span (so what if it’s for Netflix?) and Scorcese‘s visible fetish for celebrating favourite actors rather than acting. Watchable? Well yes, but actually no. Unless you haven’t got anything better to do with 3 and a half hours screen time.