‘The Irishman’ Is Currently the Best Reviewed Martin Scorsese Movie Ever
There was a lot of trepidation, not all of it unfair, about Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman. It was Scorsese’s first movie with Robert De Niro in almost 25 years, and it relied heavily on extensive CGI to de-age De Niro and fellow actors Joe Pesci and Al Pacino, which could have gone really really wrong.
Thankfully, though, it looks like it didn’t. The reviews out of the New York Film Festival, where The Irishman made its world premiere over the weekend, weren’t just positive; they were effusive. Critics fell in love with all three lead actors, the screenplay by Steve Zaillian, and Scorsese’s use of gangster movie tropes to tell a new story about mortality and regret. As of this writing, with 56 reviews already in on Rotten Tomatoes, The Irishman has a perfect 100 percent score. At least for now, that makes it the best-reviewed fiction movie of Scorsese’s career.
Here’s Scorsese’s five other highest-rated films on Rotten Tomatoes:
- Taxi Driver - 98%
- Mean Streets - 97%
- Goodfellas - 96%
- Raging Bull - 96%
- Hugo - 93%
Scorsese does have two other 100s on Rotten Tomatoes, but those are both for his (truly excellent) documentaries about classic films, A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies and My Voyage to Italy. And if you’re throwing docs into the mix, Scorsese’s concert film about The Band, The Last Waltz, also has a 98 on Rotten Tomatoes as well. But at the moment, The Irishman reigns supreme among his fiction films. (We assume the backlash will start approximately 45 minutes from now.)
The Irishman opens in theaters on November 1 and it will be available on Netflix starting on November 27.
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