The Irishman is a (literally) massive accomplishment by Martin Scorsese

The director's new gangster flick is clever, startling, violent, and awesomely ambitious

The first thing you should know about The Irishman is that it should really be called I Heard You Paint Houses. That's the title of the disputed 2004 true crime memoir by Charles Brandt that serves as the source material, and it's also an innuendo — one that is explained in the film's opening moments by a quick cut to blood splattering, Jackson Pollock-like, across the wall of a house after a gunshot. It is the perfect image, and title, for Martin Scorsese's first gangster film since The Departed, and one that even appears misleadingly on not one but two title cards book-ending the movie.

What you probably know about The Irishman instead is that it's long — the final runtime clocks in at a bladder-bursting 209 minutes — and has a legendary cast of actors who are "de-aged" by VFX that took years to perfect. You might have also heard that it is Scorsese's first time partnering with Netflix (the only studio that would fund the gargantuan film), and, if you happened to be on Twitter after the movie screened for critics at the New York Film Festival on Friday morning, that it is getting praised for being very, very good. But what all that doesn't tell you is that The Irishman is every bit as clever, startling, violent, and obsessively purposeful as the colorful metaphor that serves as its alternate title.

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Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.