Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons
Have I Seen it Before: nope, and as I type this, neither have you. I managed to finagle my way into a press screening on Wednesday. I even had a notion to finish the review before the film was officially released on Friday, but…
Did I Like It: I honestly needed a bit of time to really come to a reasonable opinion about the film. The phrase “this is Scorsese’s best movie since Goodfellas (1990)” (including the obligatory citation of the year of the film) kept wandering through my head. One does not want to lean to closely on hyperbole, but:
This is Scorsese’s best movie since Goodfellas (1990). I’ve liked everything he’s done, as he is the only guardian angel left of the movies, it seems. People like to turn their nose up at The Departed (2006), but I loved the hell out of that movie. I’d even be willing to watch the first two-thirds of New York Stories (1989) if the opportunity presented itself, I even enjoyed The Irishman (2019), despite violating the rules of how we were all supposed to take in the film as I watched it in pieces on my phones when I had the time.
Here, too, we are asked for something of a time commitment, as the film clocks in at 3 hours 45 minutes, but there’s not a moment where this feels like it is asking too much from us. The performances are pitch-perfect throughout, with Gladstone and Plemons being revelations. It is unflinching. It is upsetting. There is a stretch (largely after Plemons character enters the film) that it becomes one of film’s greatest absurdist tragicomedies. It all ends in a sequence you will likely never see coming, but from which you will come away thinking it was the absolute perfect way to drive the themes home and to wrap up the storylines.
It’s everything you could want from a Scorsese movie, and it manages to surprise you throughout. Go see it as soon as possible, and do so on the big screen. If for no other reason than there is very little of the year left, I can’t possibly fathom a scenario in which this is not my favorite film of the year.