TThe expectations were high but Martin Scorsese’s new film has exceeded them with a magnum opus summing up his life’s work. An account of the circumstances that led to the disappearance of infamous Teamsters Union boss Jimmy Hoffa, The Irishman might best be summed up as elegiac.

It is elegiac, not only because the story is narrated by a man in his 80s, but also because the director and his three stars, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, are also in their late 70s, looking back at a lifetime of great accomplishment. Together, they are a knockout. And perhaps most surprisingly, the film is funny. Audiences will likely enjoy coasting along with the characters in this strange universe of “Goodfellas” that we have become accustomed to through Scorsese’s films.

Much has been made of the new de-ageing CGI technique used in the film, a device that enables actors to play themselves convincingly at different ages over the course of several decades. The technique is most significantly employed to de-age De Niro, but after a few minutes, viewers will get caught up in the story and the technology will cease to be of interest. The same is true of the three-and-a-half-hour running time. In fact, the viewers I attended with felt the film might even have been a little short.

The story concerns Frank Sheeran, a truck-driving teamster, who manages to catch the eye of local mob boss Russell Bufalino, played quietly by a brilliant Joe Pesci. Sheeran signs on with Bufalino for a lifetime of loyal friendship, which most involves completing unsavory jobs for him. After all, he tells us, he needs to take care of his ever-growing family and that means making money.

We get a glance at Frank’s tour of duty in the military, during which he unhesitatingly kills two German prisoners on command. There is an implicit question as whether his wartime experiences changed him or simply qualified him for the work he later takes up. De Niro’s cool, unemotional, performance doesn’t clarify this for us.

It is a tribute to the actor that we come to like and sympathize with Frank, even as we see him kill people, seemingly without remorse. And Frank, after all, is not without his good points. When he beats up the grocer who shoves his young daughter, we think this is an excessive but understandable act – he clearly loves his daughters dearly. Scorsese’s masterful direction gradually reveals to us, however, the gradual toll that Frank’s violent acts take on his children, leading to a sad estrangement in later years.

Jimmy Hoffa, for many years the leader of the Teamsters Union, (played by Al Pacino in what I thought was a somewhat over-the-top performance, though others liked it) becomes Frank’s second mentor. Frank tries desperately to protect Hoffa after he returns from prison and attempts unsuccessfully to help him recapture the union leadership. Ultimately, De Niro shows us Frank’s pain as events proceed to the inevitable conclusion.

The last half hour or so of the film shows us the aging Frank, close to death, with De Niro delivering what may be the most powerful work of his career in his depiction of the end of life, his memories and perhaps his regrets.

The film is based on the book “I Heard you Paint Houses,” by Charles Brandt, which makes claims to being a true account of Hoffa’s demise. Many of the claims in it have been questioned, but it won’t matter to most viewers – it works just as well as a piece of fiction as it does a true story.

Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman opened the 2019 New York Film Festival. It will have a limited run in American cinemas from November 1 before it’s international Netflix release on November 27.