The three Oscar-winning gangster movie legends are finally back and this time with fellow Academy Award winner Al Pacino.
Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci’s best-known gangster movie team-ups with director Martin Scorsese have to be Goodfellas and Casino.
And now they’re together again for The Irishman, which looks set to be a big 2020 Oscars contender for Netflix.
The official synopsis reads: “Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci star in Martin Scorsese’s THE IRISHMAN, an epic saga of organised crime in post-war America told through the eyes of World War II veteran Frank Sheeran, a hustler and hitman who worked alongside some of the most notorious figures of the 20th Century.”
The synopsis continues: “Spanning decades, the film chronicles one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in American history, the disappearance of legendary union boss Jimmy Hoffa, and offers a monumental journey through the hidden corridors of organised crime: its inner workings, rivalries and connections to mainstream politics.”
The Irishman took some pulling together, with Pesci supposedly turning down his part as many as 50 times, having technically retired from acting 20 years ago.
Meanwhile, Scorsese controversially went with Netflix to secure the $200 million budget a studio wouldn’t agree to, meaning The Irishman could be the streaming service’s first Best Picture win at the 2020 Oscars.
It’s also worth noting that The Irishman is set over several decades, digitally de-ageing some of the actors to as young as 30 for some scenes.
The new movie is based on Charles Brandt’s book, I Heard You Paint Houses, about the deathbed confession of Frank ‘The Irishman’ Sheeran – a former hitman who revealed the truth behind the disappearance of Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa in 1975.
According to IMDB, De Niro will star as Sheeran, with Pacino as Hoffa and Pesci as Russell Bufalino – the mob boss of the Northeastern Pennsylvanian crime family.
A controversial case, Sheeran claimed he killed Hoffa – something that carried enough weight for the FBI to pull up floorboards in the place he said he did it to look for DNA evidence.
There are still a couple of men alive in their nineties who might know what really happened the night Hoffa disappeared, but they won’t talk about it.
Aside from The Irishman, there are some other hot contenders for the 2020 Oscars.
This month Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is released and currently has the best odds of 6-1 to win Best Picture at the 2020 Academy Awards.
This isn’t too surprising considering the incredible cast of Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, the fact Tarantino hasn’t won for Best Director or Best Picture yet and most of all the Academy can’t resist a movie about their very own Tinseltown.
Meanwhile, according to Coral, The Irishman is at 8-1 for the top Oscar while Cats, A Beautiful Day in The Neighbourhood, The Laundromat and The Lighthouse are all on 10-1.
The Irishman will hit select cinemas and stream on Netflix this autumn.