I Heard You Paint Houses

Based on the book by Charles Brandt, I Heard You Paint Houses follows Robert De Niro’s Frank Sheeran as he moves his way up through the ranks in the mob to become a respected and feared hitman – with the narrative eventually detailing Sheeran’s friendship with notorious union leader Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). Martin Scorsese delivers an erratically-paced yet mostly engaging picture that boasts an impressively engrossing opening stretch, as the filmmaker, working from Steven Zaillian’s screenplay, kicks I Heard You Paint Houses off with an admittedly familiar first act that’s nevertheless as completely compelling as one might’ve hoped – with Scorsese’s typically solid direction heightened by a series of top-notch performances. (De Niro is so good here, in fact, that the less-than-seamless digital de-aging effects aren’t the distraction they easily could’ve been.) There’s little doubt, however, that the film, saddled with a 209 minute running time (!), does suffer from a somewhat erratic midsection, as the shift in focus to Sheeran’s relationship with Hoffa ultimately wreaks havoc on the momentum established by the blistering first act (ie the Hoffa stuff feels like a whole new movie, for the most part). I Heard You Paint Houses does benefit substantially from an ongoing emphasis on electrifying interludes and sequences (eg a tense meeting that goes from bad to worse due to a participant’s tardiness), while the movie’s centerpiece, a long, mostly dialogue-free stretch detailing the buildup to and execution of a mob hit, is certainly as gripping and enthralling as anything Scorsese’s done in his career. By the time the surprisingly grim and unexpectedly affecting final half hour rolls around, I Heard You Paint Houses has definitively confirmed its place as an ambitious and mostly successful triumph that more than makes up for Scorsese’s last few misfires.

***1/2 out of ****