10 Film Directors Who Used The Same Ending Twice
7. The Gangster's Life Ends In Mediocrity - Martin Scorsese
The Original
It would be facile to claim that the moral of Martin Scorsese's gangster epics was "crime doesn't pay," given that he's clearly far more interested in simply observing the torrid lives of criminals.
But the director's gangster movies do nevertheless confirm again and again that the mobster's life is ultimately incompatible with stability and happiness, and sooner or later they're destined to be left with the tatters of their glamorous former existence.
Case in point, Scorsese's Goodfellas powerfully depicts the downfall of mob associate Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), who eventually becomes a state informant to save himself and his family, and is left an "average nobody" by film's end.
The Repeat(s)
Casino similarly follows the descent of Sam "Ace" Rothstein (Robert De Niro), a sports handicapper and Mafia associate whose gambling empire ultimately implodes amid the war between the mob and the FBI.
With the mob edged out, large corporations start redeveloping Las Vegas and Sam finds himself working again as a handicapper, "right back where I started," in his own words.
And finally there's The Irishman, which serves as a bleak capper to this thematically linked trilogy of films, chronicling the life and times of truck driver-turned-mob hitman Frank Sheeran (De Niro).
Surprise surprise, Sheeran's early life with the mob is prosperous, though by film's end Sheeran has spent a stint in prison and been offloaded to a nursing home, where he lives out his final days in loneliness while still hounded by the FBI for information.
In the case of The Irishman, this is an ingenious feat of remixing a superficially similar ending to a more haunting, existential end.