Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a gangster walks into a nursing home. Priest says to the gangster, “Unburden yourself, my child.” Gangster says, “But Father, I ain’t got no burdens.” “But of course you must,” the Holy Man states, “You’ve spent a lifetime murdering people. Burning businesses. Threatening men of all stripes. You’ve deprived wives of their husbands, children of their fathers.” “But I didn’t even know the families,” the grizzled old gangster mews. “So you don’t feel sorry for any of it?” the clothed man pushes. The old shriveled meat-bag of a man shrugs, ”I guess I do have one regret…”

So goes The Irishman, Martin Scorsese’s sprawling 3.5 hour gangster opus and longtime dream project. Part hard-nosed nostalgia ballad (you can basically hear the Neil Young lyric “Old man take a look at my life…” crooning silently in the background), part geriatric crime meditation, The Irishman takes stock of a criminal life throughout decades of mid-to-late-20th-century American history. Our tour guide through it all is Frank Sheeran, a truck driver turned mob fixer turned ruthless gangland killer.

Frank is a deeply uncomplicated man. A foot soldier in the Chicago mafia throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s, Frank follows orders. He’s the kind of guy who gets the hint when a capo tells him to send a guy to “Australia”. He’ll pop two in your skull, location be damned. A dimly-lit street corner or crowded Clam House will both do fine. Frank is seemingly incapable of remorse; a stranger to genuine reflection. A survivor of WWII, he’s a hardened man who’s given himself permission to do whatever it is he deems necessary to advance his slate in his post-war life. In a sense, Frank is the worst kind of terror because man is no more than meat to him; worth little more than the many bovine carcasses he used to haul around town in a freezer truck and as equally disposable.

Adapting Charles Brandt’s 2004 narrative nonfiction “I Heard You Paint Houses” (a phrase that alludes to the Pollock-esque red splatter left on any wall after Frank’s close-range headshots) Scorsese luxuriates in the roomy storytelling space he has allowed himself, diving deep into Frank’s falling upward through the Chicago mafia and the direct ties his story shares with the evolving American political landscape. The Irishman is at its best when it provides a different perspective on history, most notably the rise and fall of John F. Kennedy, teasing out various deep-state plots that will titillate even the most fair-weathered of conspiracy theorists. Though for its over 200-minute runtime, The Irishman cannot truly claim to be a character study as it somewhat fails to genuinely illuminate some of its characters, namely Frank, who remains a chilling figure and ally to all and none, but somewhat unintelligible as a flesh and blood human being.

Part of Frank’s inhumanity can be laid at the feet of the hugely distracting digital de-aging effect that was used to wind the clock back on Robert DeNiro’s weathered visage. Netflix stepped up to foot the truly astounding $180 million bill evidently required to make the 76-year old DeNiro appear to be a much younger man but that hefty sum still does not seem to have gotten the job done. The result can be both unconvincing and distracting, an neathetrhalic evolution of the early-2000’s mo-cap tech that Zemeckis used to haunt audiences with that faux-Tom Hanks creature. The alarmingly-smooth-skinned, plastic doll-DeNiro launched this audience member face-first into uncanny valley, a place from which I could never emerge.

Behind rheumy blue eyes, DeNiro already looks a bit suspect and “off”. Rewinding Bobby’s wrinkles and the effect of gravity on the ol’ face only serves to Frank look all the more like a murderous Ken Doll. The problem is that all of the digital gloss in the world cannot account for Frank’s old man mobility in a few rough ’n’ tumble moments, DeNiro moving with all the grace of a man who is indeed deep into his seventies. Despite the huge amount of time, effort, and finances that went into achieving the “young DeNiro” effect, the result is undeniably bizarre and unpleasant and doesn’t really look anything like DeNiro 30 or 40 years ago.

In spite of any and all technical missteps, the de-aging does ultimately achieve the intended storytelling effect, opening the window for The Irishman to zoom throughout a 40-plus year span. And zoom it does. Marty lets the tale of politicians and mobsters unfold at a very natural pace, never rushing the detailed relationships that he works so carefully to develop. Until like a bird into glass, the film comes to a bit of a halt. Following a huge third act turn, Scorsese’s picture slows considerably and the time really starts to sink in. Kudos to editor Thelma Schoonmaker (who has been collaborating with Scorsese since 1980 with Raging Bull) for keeping the film light on its feet for as long as she does but even she cannot make the long-winded picture fleet-footed throughout.

Distended runtime aside, The Irishman has one huge thing going for it: Scorsese getting the gang back together. Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, and a fresh out of retirement Joe Pesci (who hasn’t appeared in a film since 2010) all work off the collective energy of the Scorsese Good Times unit, supercharging The Irishman into a fitting cumulative swan song that honors a lifetime of good ol’ boys telling crime stories. DeNiro is as good as he’s been in years but even still is frequently outshone by Pacino’s larger-than-life take on Union Teamster Jimmy Hoffa and Pesci’s spine-tingling take on Russell Bufalino. The later in particular is icy perfection, and teeth-chatteringly creepy around children, and should be on everyone’s lips going into award’s season.

Many were tempted to label Scorsese’s latest a more “mature” outing and perhaps that is because The Irishman lacks the showy pizzaz of gangster epics like Good Fellas or even the enthusiastic chutzpah of his more recent The Wolf of Wall Street. The Irishman feels like an artist struggling with his legacy, delivering a capstone on a career pocked with gangster films in suiting philosophic manner. There is no glamour here. Little glitz. The Italian-American filmmaker extends a portrait of crime and the criminally-engaged that is decidedly ruminant and thought-provoking, though I’d personally be hard press to label something “soul-searching” when its main character appears not to have a soul at all. And perhaps that’s the point of all this: monsters live among us and they too just turn into old bags of meat. Too bad we can’t just pick them out of the crowd by their weird plasticy faces.

CONCLUSION: Martin Scorsese’s passion project finally comes to life (through the magic of distracting de-aging technology) telling a long-winded but mostly gripping story of the intersection of crime, politics, and morality in the mob-controlled Chicago union scene. A freshly un-retired Joe Pesci swoops in to steal the show.