It’s amazing how Scorsese manages to continue to mature as a filmmaker. This is right up there with his other mob movies and he manages to keep it fresh and original. Al Pacino is amazing in his role as Jimmy Hoffa and I would think is a lock to be nominated for best supporting actor(Pesci too, but he has a more reserved role that I could see him missing out). Robert Deniro as well for best actor, whose best work is done as his older self, reflecting on his life. Thelma Schoonmaker does another fantastic job with the editing. This felt like it never missed a beat and seamlessly flows into different flashbacks.
This is like the culmination of 50 years of filmmaking, and that final shot is great. To me I don’t think this film could have been made 10-15 years ago, not just because of the technology, but because of the maturity of everybody involved. Take Deniro and Pesci scenes for example. Scenes they did 20 years ago are much different from the scenes in this movie. Obviously script is part of it, but you can tell by the phenomenal acting that they’ve matured to the point to make everything convincing and meaningful when they’re calmly talking about things to each other.
Frank Sheeran is able to confront himself and what he’s done In his life, and in a way, it also feels like he is confronting what he did in other Scorsese movies because we have grown with Deniro, Pesci, and Marty for decades.