10 Movies That Subtly Homaged Other Movies

One of the best directors to ever shout 'action', Martin Scorsese is most fondly associated with movies depicting crime or gangsters. While they are moral fables that usually involve the men who live by the sword dying the same way, they also feature cool characters and iconic scenes. A common criticism lobbed the way of Scorsese movies is that they glamorise crime and violence. His most recent film is the ultimate answer to that criticism.

The Irishman was released in 2019 with the financial backing of Netflix. A three-hour-long true-crime epic, it was an adaptation of the Charles Brandt non-fiction book I Heard You Paint Houses. Chronicling the life of mob hitman Frank Sheeran, it is a tale of destroyed lives. Sheeran aligns himself with powerful people to provide for his family and in doing so, turns his back on his family. There may have been money and power, but it didn't stop Sheeran from spending his dying days alone in a nursing home, his children disowning him for his corruption.

Scorsese wants there to be no doubt about what kind of tale this will be. He doesn't wait until the third act for the glamour to fade. Instead, he opens with a Steadicam shot through a nursing home that will lead us to an elderly Sheeran, played by De Niro. This shot is a homage to Goodfellas, one of Scorsese's most celebrated films.

The scene in reference is a Steadicam shot following gangster-on-the-rise Henry Hill entering a club with his other half. Hill is friendly with everyone he passes, the most popular man in a building teeming with life.

The Irishman has no such glamour and is instead bookended with shots of a lonely Sheeran sitting in his wheelchair.