Robert De Niro – the Olivier of toxic masculinity – delivers yet another inimitable mobster performance as Frank Sheeran, who spent a lifetime in organized crime. The Irishman is essentially his autobiography, albeit its veracity is somewhat akin to that of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Chuck Barris’s fever dream of an autobiography. Sheeran can rest easy in his own little corner of hell now that his misbegotten life has been memorialized by De Niro, the moviestar who sits alongside Brando atop the acting pantheon.

• Al Pacino appears in a Martin Scorsese movie for the first time in The Irishman, amazing but true. It’s a doozy of a role — major national figure Jimmy Hoffa. Pacino plays the infamous union boss as a live wire. It’s a terrific performance, one of Pacino’s best, which makes it legendary.
• Joe Pesci plays mob boss Russell Bufalino as a deeply centered guy, which is unlike most Pesci roles, and therefore strangely fascinating.
• Ray Romano plays his cousin Bill Bufalino, corrupt lawyer for the Teamsters. Romano can act.
• Harvey Keitel does little more than cameo as mob boss Angelo Bruno, conveying serious gravitas in his brief time on screen.
• Bobby Cannavale plays on the varsity alongside De Niro, Pacino, Pesci and Keitel. He nails it.
• Anna Paquin cameos as Peggy Sheeran, hitman’s daughter. She disapproves of her dad’s line of work. Lucy Gallina has more screen-time as young Peggy, a sensitive girl.
• Stephen Graham is a hoot as mob boss and Teamsters local president “Tony Pro” Provenzano.
• Kathrine Narducci gives mafia princess Carrie Bufalino serious swag.
• Jesse Plemons is always great, here as Jimmy Hoffa’s stepson Chuckie O’Brien.
• Jack Huston is little more than ok as Bobby Kennedy.

The Irishman is almost clinical in its long list of particulars: how adults interacted with children in the sixties, how Catholic priests interacted with penitents, how mob families and families in the mob acted, and on and on and on. Call it Scorsese’s clinic.

The Irishman spans thirty years. So Scorsese’s choice was to go the traditional route of using young actors and then putting old-age makeup on them, or the new fangled method of using old actors and “de-aging” them for the young scenes. He made the right choice, especially because the old actors are Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino. No offense to Millennials, but how do you compete with that murderers’ row?