[4] It stars Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, with Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Paquin, Stephen Graham, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Jesse Plemons, and Harvey Keitel in supporting roles.

The film follows Frank Sheeran (De Niro), a truck driver who becomes a hitman involved with mobster Russell Bufalino (Pesci) and his crime family before later working for the powerful Teamster Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino).

Scenes were filmed with a custom three-camera rig to help facilitate the extensive de-ageing digital effects that made De Niro, Pacino, and Pesci appear younger.

The film received widespread critical acclaim, with praise for Scorsese's direction, the production and costume design, editing, screenplay, cinematography, the use of de-aging effects, and the performances of De Niro, Pacino and Pesci.

In a nursing home, elderly Irish-American World War II veteran Frank Sheeran recounts his time as a hitman for the Italian-American Mafia.

While Hoffa is in prison, his replacement as Teamsters president, Frank "Fitz" Fitzsimmons, misuses the union's pension fund and gives interest-free loans to the Mafia.

Additionally, several actors appear in smaller roles, including Aleksa Palladino as Mary Sheeran, Kevin O'Rourke as John McCullough, Bo Dietl as Joey Glimco, Kate Arrington as Older Connie Sheeran, Jordyn DiNatale as Young Connie Sheeran, Jim Norton as Don Rickles, Al Linea as Sam "Momo" Giancana, Garry Pastore as Albert Anastasia, Daniel Jenkins as E. Howard "Big Ears" Hunt, Paul Ben-Victor as Jake Gottlieb, Patrick Gallo as Anthony "Tony Jack" Giacalone, Jake Hoffman as Allen Dorfman, Ken Clark as James P. Hoffa, Peter Jay Fernandez as Cecil B. Moore, Jeff Moore as Frank Church, Gino Cafarelli as Frank Rizzo, and Robert Funaro as Johnny, a Friendly Lounge bartender.

[16] In July 2017, it was reported that the film would be presented as a series of flashbacks of an older Frank Sheeran, depicted as recollecting his many criminal activities over several decades,[17] with De Niro appearing "as young as 24 years and as old as 80.

"[11] In May 2016, Mexican production company Fábrica de Cine had offered $100 million to finance the film, and through that deal Paramount Pictures would retain domestic rights.

[21][22] By February 2017, Paramount Pictures had dropped domestic distribution rights for The Irishman following the announcement that Fábrica de Cine would not be financing the film due to its climbing budget.

[36] Chip Fleischer, the publisher of I Heard You Paint Houses, wrote a detailed reply to Tonelli's piece, calling it "irresponsible in the extreme, not to mention damaging.

"[40] In September 2017, Jack Huston,[41] Stephen Graham,[42] Domenick Lombardozzi, Jeremy Luke, Joseph Russo,[43] Kathrine Narducci,[44] Danny Abeckaser,[45] J. C. MacKenzie, and Craig Vincent[46] joined the cast.

Scorsese added that there is a meta aspect to seeing Pacino and De Niro interact in The Irishman, saying, "What you see in the film is their relationship as actors, as friends, over the past 40, 45 years.

[56][57] Instead, filming began on September 18, 2017, in New York City and in the Mineola and Williston Park sections of Long Island,[58][59][60] and wrapped on March 5, 2018, for a total of 108 days.

[77] Two tracks Robertson wrote for the film that appear in the credits, "I Hear You Paint Houses" and "Remembrance" featuring Frederic Yonnet on the diatonic harmonica, were included on his 2019 album Sinematic.

The festival's director Tricia Tuttle said it was an "immense cinephile thrill" to close the event with an "epic of breathtakingly audacious scale and complexity" from "one of the true greats of cinema".

[97] A 23-minute featurette of a roundtable discussion with Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci titled The Irishman: In Conversation was released on Netflix on November 28, 2019.

[98] A three-part companion podcast for the film called Behind The Irishman was hosted by Sebastian Maniscalco, and published weekly from December 2 to 16, 2019; there were also three bonus episodes released on January 27, 30, and February 3, 2020.

[112] To promote the release of the film on its streaming service, Netflix took over five blocks of Little Italy, Manhattan, on November 22 and 23, 2019, and back-dated them to August 1, 1975, the day after Jimmy Hoffa was reported missing.

[118] Deadline Hollywood noted that numerous showtimes at several theaters, including Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles and the IFC Center in New York, had sold-out showings.

The website's critics consensus reads: "An epic gangster drama that earns its extended runtime, The Irishman finds Martin Scorsese revisiting familiar themes to poignant, funny, and profound effect.

[127] Writing for Time, Stephanie Zacharek gave The Irishman a perfect score, calling the film "clever and entertaining, to the point where you may think that's all it's going to be" and that "its last half-hour is deeply moving in a way that creeps up on you, and it's then that you see what Scorsese was working toward all along"; she also added that "the de-aging is distracting at first ... but the special effects are hardly a deal breaker, and in the end they probably add to the movie's mythological vibe".

[128] Similarly, Owen Gleiberman of Variety called it "a coldly enthralling, long-form knockout—a majestic Mob epic with ice in its veins", particularly praising Pacino's performance as "the film's most extraordinary".

[129] RogerEbert.com's Matt Zoller Seitz gave the film three and a half stars out of four, defining Scorsese as "one of the greatest living comedy directors who isn't described as such," and also praised the editing of Thelma Schoonmaker.

[135] Nicholas Rapold of Film Comment, gave the de-aging CGI approach used in the filming a mixed assessment, stating that: "De Niro's rosy complexion as a truck driver 'kid' recalls a tinted postcard photo more than a twentysomething person, and I can't explain away the same de-aged De Niro curb-stomping a grocer, looking more like the septuagenarian star he is than a ferociously protective thirtysomething dad.

"[138] Conversely, Richard Brody of The New Yorker wrote "it runs a minute shy of three and a half hours, and I wouldn't wish it any shorter",[139] and Karen Han of Polygon said that "Scorsese is so adept at storytelling, and his cast is so unbelievable, that the film ... barely feels its length.

"[140] The Irishman also garnered acclaim from a number of filmmakers, many of whom listed the film as one of their favorites of 2019, including Ana Lily Amirpour, Olivier Assayas, Bong Joon-ho, Guillermo del Toro, Luca Guadagnino, Ciro Guerra, Bill Hader, Don Hertzfeldt, Alejandro Landes, Alex Ross Perry, Paul Schrader, Adam Wingard, and Quentin Tarantino, who ranked it as his favorite of the year.

"[143] That same year, it ranked number 28 on Empire's list of the "100 Greatest Movies of the 21st Century," calling it a blend of "the multiple-decade-spanning storytelling of Goodfellas with the quiet, ruminative tone of Silence.

Oddly enough, people in recent years have been spending quite a bit of their spare time watching killers, and in situations outside the usual context of law enforcement.

[149]Guillermo del Toro agrees with Brody: Martin Scorsese ... has long been the primary chronicler of violence and greed in America, as he clearly understands that one cannot exist without the other and that they are both touchstones of a way of life and, probably, the country itself.