The Irishman

[arsenal]

Just watched The Irishman, Martin Scorsese's epic mafia movie. 3 1/2 hours long it centers on the life of mob hit man Frank Sheeran.

Every Italian American in town is in it and for me the casting of Robert de Niro as the lead didn't work. With little actual dialogue I think Liam Neeson apart from being Irish has a broader facial range. Joe Pesci is excellent as a mob boss but it's Al Pacino who stands out as Jimmy Hoffa, the union leader. Talking about Joe Kennedy he says.

"He had a stroke, you have a stroke you're in the grave. He's an eggplant. His kids killed him, they'd give anybody a heart attack."

Special award to the make up team. Pesci and de Niro age about 40 years and the transformation is amazingly believable.

[Nirish guy]

Good film but I felt that I'D aged about 40 years by the time it was over !

[arsenal]

Yes. It's a two sitting film and the Italian/American accent isn't always the easiest to understand.

[Brad the Impala]

It's another great Scorsese movie.

As the leads are already of an age they had to be de-aged to play themselves through the 50 years that the film covers. This was achieved digitally rather than by makeup. The process was specially developed/refined for this movie. You can see the process in this video.

[latintopxxx]

...fascinating...trump is right...its all fake news...cant believe anything we see anymore...

[Nirish guy]

Yeah Great Youtube piece there Brad, whilst I'd read a bit about it I didn't realise there was just THAT much innovation that had gone on in the background of that movie. But was it just me that thought for the time and money that that must undoubtedly have taken whilst the results were visible they weren't earth shattering and I'm guessing the guys could have played the same parts with make up and got away with it more or less just as well as they did with all the IT help ??

[Brad the Impala]

With these actors you couldn't have done it with makeup. That's why they waited two years for the technology to be improved to the level where the de-aging was of acceptable quality. By which time the actors were ironically even older! But Scorsese wanted these actors. He'd waited 40 years to work with Al Pacino, and of course he loves working with De Niro.

You could have done it with just makeup with other actors. If the age range to be played is something like 25 to 75, you would cast actors aged 40 or so, and then age them both up and down with makeup. Usually easier to age up with makeup and prosthetics than age down.