At its heart, Martin Scorsese's The Irishman is a battle for the heart and soul of one person: mob hitman Frank Sheeran. On one side, there's Frank's best friend, notorious Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa. On the other, there's Frank's mentor, mob boss Russell Bufalino, who introduced Sheeran to the world of organized crime. As the decades pass, both Hoffa and Bufalino test Sheeran's loyalty, even as the tenuous relationship with the union chief falls apart. A few years after Hoffa gets out of prison on jury-tampering charges, his increasingly erratic and self-serving behavior threatens to upend the entire operation. Something needs to be done.
The whole thing comes to a head during a ceremony celebrating Sheeran's commitment to the Teamsters.
On what should've been a joyous occasion for Frank, Bufalino pulls him aside to deliver an urgent message. First, he gives Sheeran a special ring, commemorating the relationship between the two. Next, Bufalino gives Sheeran an ominous warning.
Basically, if Sheeran doesn't get Hoffa to back down, the mob is going to have to take more drastic measures.
It's a fantastic scene between Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, who plays Bufalino. This short, subtle conversation doesn't just mark one of Pesci's best moments in the movie - it's a wonderful testament to his abilities as an actor in general, and the perfect capstone to his five-decade career. Here's how.
Before his Oscar-nominated appearance in Scorsese's Raging Bull in 1980, Pesci only had one film credit to his name - The Death Collector, a low-budget mob thriller - and that came out in 1976.
However, Robert De Niro saw The Death Collector and, impressed with Pesci's performance, convinced Scorsese to cast Pesci in Raging Bull. Thus began Pesci's career, and De Niro and Pesci's decades-long friendship. Forty years later, history repeated itself: According to Scorsese, Pesci turned down The Irishman 40 times before De Niro finally convinced him to appear in the movie.
In The Irishman, that relationship is the same, but flipped. Pesci's Bufalino is the one who sees the potential in De Niro's Sheeran. He's the one who brings Frank into the larger criminal underworld, and even as Sheeran's friendship with Hoffa grows, Buffalino is the one who guides the Teamster's career. That being said, he also loves Sheeran.
And that one moment from that one scene tells you everything you need to know about their relationship. It's disarmingly powerful, especially since Pesci has tightened the reins so much on this character.
Long-running friendship | 0:00
A restrained performance | 2:58
Commanding respect | 4:01
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Hit man Frank Sheeran looks back at the secrets he kept as a loyal member of the Bufalino crime family in this acclaimed film from Martin Scorsese.