Martin Scorsese's THE IRISHMAN Might Have a Runtime of 210 Minutes!
Martin Scorsese’s new crime epic, The Irishman, is set to make its big debut at the New York Film Festival and last night the festival’s website posted that the runtime of the film is 210 minutes! That means the movie is over three hours long!
The website has since removed the runtime, but it was there and reported on by several outlets before it was taken down. I found out about it over on /Film.
Some people may think that 210 minutes is way too long for a film, but I don’t look at it like that. I don’t care how long a movie is. What I do care about is if the story being told is strengthened by the length. If there are important elements to the story that need to be told in a bit more detail, then so be it.
Martin Scorsese is a master storyteller and he doesn’t seem to fill his movies with wasteful footage and moments. When he set out to tell his stories, he knows exactly the kind of story he wants to tell, and if that story clocks in at 3.5 hours, I’ll be there to watch it because I know I’m going to get a great movie.
When a long movie is good, audiences should be so engulfed in the film and absorbed by the story that time doesn’t matter. Scorsese is the kind of a director that can create a world on screen that you’ll want more time to get to know it.
The Irishman stars Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel and is based on Charles Brandt’s book, I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank ‘The Irishman’ Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa, and there's a lot of controversy surrounding the story as it's based on the deathbed confession of Frank "The Irishman” Sheeran.
"The hit man claimed to tell the real story of the disappearance of former Teamsters boss Hoffa. However, the account Sheeran told to Brandt has been disputed. Still, the FBI actually thought enough of Sheeran’s confession to pull up several floor boards from a house where he said he shot and killed Hoffa to look for DNA evidence. Latter the bureau said that the samples found weren’t from Hoffa."
Netflix will release the film in theaters on November 1st and will spread out into more theaters over a three and a half week period before launching on the streaming service on November 27th.