It sure looks like Netflix now has a strong contender for the awards season in their new original filmThe Irishman directed by Martin Scorsese. The Irishman premiered at the 57th New York Film Festival and is scheduled to have a limited theatrical release on 1 November. Early reviews of the film are calling it nothing short of a masterpiece, as if the Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci-starrer wasn’t hyped enough already.
What’s more, The Irishman is currently resting on a 100% score on rottentomatoes.com, the popular film review aggregator. Here’s a peek at some of the reviews out for The Irishman:
Benjamin Lee in The Guardian writes, “As one might expect from a director of such loving precision, The Irishman is exquisitely made, every detail carefully considered, every location perfectly picked and with such a gargantuan budget at hand, it feels utterly transporting, a film to be savoured on a big, crisp screen rather than half-watched on a smartphone.”
Bbc.com’s critic Caryn James loved that the film is not just a pure Scorsese treat but also goes beyond expectations. “Scorsese knows his audience and reputation so well that the film constantly plays with, and defies, expectations. The opening scene is pure Scorsese; a tracking shot moves down a long corridor, sailing past a religious statue, pop music on the soundtrack (In the Still of the Night, by the Five Satins), until we arrive in a room in a nursing home,” says her review.
Owen Gleiberman, chief film critic at Variety.com, seems to have been totally floored by the big budget mob saga. “Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman is a coldly enthralling, long-form knockout — a majestic Mob epic with ice in its veins. It’s the film that, I think, a lot us wanted to see from Scorsese: a stately, ominous, suck-in-your-breath summing up, not just a drama but a reckoning, a vision of the criminal underworld that’s rippling with echoes of the director’s previous Mob films, but that also takes us someplace bold and new,” he raves in his review.
While criticising the Scorsese film for it’s length, The Hollywood Reporter, nevertheless calls The Irishman “a beautifully crafted piece of deluxe cinema”. Writing for THR, David Rooney says, “The Irishman is also on many levels a beautifully crafted piece of deluxe cinema. It's full of sinuous tracking shots from cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto that induce swoons; sumptuous period production and costume design that evoke not just a vanished America but a near-extinct American movie realm; and fluid cutting from indispensable Scorsese collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker, who maintains the flow even in patches when Steven Zaillian's dense screenplay grows protracted. The movie is never less than engaging and its milieu at all times vivid and alive.”
WhileThe Irishman will not have a theatrical release in India on 1 November, the film will stream on Netflix from 27 November onwards.
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