Robert De Niro and Al Pacino reunite — and it looks like they’ve shed years off their faces in the first trailer for Martin Scorsese’s CG-enhanced mob movie “The Irishman.”
Netflix’s true-crime story, which will open this fall’s New York Film Festival, stars De Niro as a World War II veteran turned mafia hitman named Frank Sheeran. Pacino plays Jimmy Hoffa, the former president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters who went missing in 1975. Hoffa’s body was never found and his fate was speculated about for decades.
The trailer suggests a decade-spanning saga of organized crime in post-WWII America that covers Hoffa’s rise as leader of the Teamsters, Sheeran’s participation in hits for the Bufalino crime family as well as the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
The film, first greenlit three years ago, uses digital technology to de-age seventysomething stars De Niro, Pacino and Joe Pesci.
Other co-stars include Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Paquin, Stephen Graham, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Jack Huston, Kathrine Narducci, Jesse Plemons, Domenick Lombardozzi, Paul Herman, Gary Basaraba and Marin Ireland.
It’s the third time De Niro and Pacino have shared the screen, following 1995’s “Heat” and 2008’s “Righteous Kill.” (They also appeared, though not together, in “The Godfather, Part 2.”)
“The Irishman” marks DeNiro’s ninth time working with Martin Scorsese; their previous collaborations include “Mean Streets,” “Taxi Driver,” “New York, New York,” “Raging Bull,” “The King of Comedy,” “Goodfellas,” “Cape Fear” and “Casino.” It’s the first time that Scorsese has directed Pacino.
Screenwriter Steven Zaillian adapted Charles Brandt’s 2003 Sheeran biography “I Heard You Paint Houses.” The title refers to the first words Hoffa ever spoke to Sheeran, “paint” being a euphemism for blood that is splattered on walls and floors after a murder. According to Brandt, Sheeran had confessed to killing Hoffa and carrying out two dozen other hits for the mob.
The film’s producers are Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, Emma Tillinger Koskoff, Irwin Winkler, Gerald Chamales, Gaston Pavlovich and Randall Emmett.
The 2019 New York Film Festival will open with the world premiere of “The Irishman.”
Netflix will release “The Irishman” this fall in select theaters as well as on its streaming service.