This could have been a classic film but for one fatal flaw: casting Al Pacino as Jimmy Hoffa. Hoffa was born in Indiana, and lived in Michigan, and was a pure Midwesterner of his day. Pacino came off like a trained method actor from Brooklyn who studied Hoffa's mannerisms, but could never capture the spirit of the man. DiNiro and Pesce stepped out of their traditional personas and inhabited the core of who they were portraying. Pacino's performance was interchangeable with every other real-life personality he's played in the last 15 years. It felt like Scorsese cast Pacino just because he had never worked with him and wanted to check that box on his career list.