10 Times Less Was Definitely More In Movies
6. The Irishman - Jimmy Hoffa's Assassination
In 1975, corrupt union leader Jimmy Hoffa vanished. In 2004, mob hitman Frank Sheeran confessed to assassinating him. And in 2019, Martin Scorsese made that book into a movie.
It will come as no surprise that this nearly three-and-a-half-hour movie likes to take its time. But the sequence leading up to Frank Sheeran being forced to kill his close friend Jimmy Hoffa is heart-breaking and nail-biting in equal measure.
After being ordered to carry out the murder by his boss, Russell Bufalino, Frank drives to an airstrip and is taken by plane to Detroit. The next twenty minutes play out like Frank and Jimmy are just going for a regular meeting with some friends. There’s no tense music, no dramatic camera shots. Just Frank sitting next to his friend with the awful knowledge that he is already dead. And when they’re finally alone in the house where the meeting is supposed to be, Frank shoots Jimmy twice in the back of the head and walks out without a word.
Scorsese deliberately lingers on Hoffa’s dead body for a little too long, reminding us that a life of crime nets you nothing but a horrible death.