Martin Scorsese says The Irishman will be tonally different from Goodfellas

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

Martin Scorsese's GOODFELLAS is one of the few movies which I make a point of watching each and every year. It's a truly excellent crime drama filled with utterly fantastic performances from Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta and Joe Pesci, but I'm sure I don't need to tell you that. It would be a tall order to follow up that film, but Martin Scorsese told The Independent that his upcoming film THE IRISHMAN, which will see the director returning to the world of organized crime, will be tonally different from his work on GOODFELLAS or CASINO.

I think this is different, I think it is. I admit that there are – you know, Goodfellas and Casino have a certain style that I created for them – it's on the page in the script actually.  Putting Goodfellas together was almost like an afterthought, at times I was kind of rushing, I felt I'd already done it because I'd played it all out in terms of the camera moves and the editing and that sort of thing. The style of the picture, the cuts, the freeze-frames, all of this was planned way in advance, but here it's a little different. The people are also older in The Irishman, it's certainly more about looking back, a retrospective so to speak of a man's life and the choices that he's had to make.

Based on Charles Brandt’s "I Heard You Paint Houses." THE IRISHMAN follows the career of Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, a mob hitman who was supposedly involved in the death of Jimmy Hoffa. Martin Scorsese said that what attracted him to the project was the chance to explore what makes someone become a professional killer. "It's about love, betrayal, remorse and the sadness and tragedy, ultimately, of a life led that way," said Scorsese. "And it's about mercy too, I don't know if there'll be any of that in the picture yet, there might be." Set to star Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel and Bobby Cannavale, THE IRISHMAN is expected to kick off production this August and Netflix is planning a 2019 release for the long-awaited film.

As THE IRISHMAN will explore the life of Frank Sheeran throughout several decades and Martin Scorsese doesn't want to resort to unconvincing make-up or hiring younger actors, it will fall to Industrial Light & Magic to give digital makeovers to several members of the main cast, including Robert De Niro.