Sorry. Not so captivating. You wanna watch a Martin Scorsese movie and then tell your friends how fantastic it is. But not this time. Sorry.

Actually from the first scenes in the movie you are being struck by the idiocy of young men moving like old men. I mean, you can make someone younger with modern computer technology, but the way Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino move their hands, their heads, their eyes, their whole body language, completely takes away the illusion associated with cinema. Good cinema is when you believe in everything up there on the silver screen. That belief, that illusion is what sets cinema apart from the theater and sometimes real life.

THE IRISHMAN doesn't capture this illusion and our love for these aging actors (dare I say old?) doesn't make up for it either. A good story well-executed, but the illusion gets broken again and again. Martin Scorsese should had used younger actors since it clearly is much easier to make young actors act like old people rather than having old actors act like young people. That is the simple lesson of this movie.

Oh and, the other lesson is that everybody wants to see a Martin Scorsese movie with Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino. No matter the cost, apparently... (budget + 150.000.000 US dollars)

So were the money well spent? From an audience point of view, from my point of view, the answer to that is a resounding NO ... because the illusion wasn't there... Sorry!