Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman Earns Savage Review from Odd Source
Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro turned the story of assassin Frank Sheeran into a soulful epic with The Irishman. But the casket industry isn't fooled by Hollywood magic.
Martin Scorsese is a film legend. The director has won nearly every major accolade, including an Academy Award and multiple Emmy Awards, British Academy Film Awards, and Directors Guild Awards. His movies have ranged from the groundbreaking crime films Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, and The Wolf of Wall Street to religious explorations The Last Temptation of Christ and Silence to period romance The Age of Innocence. Nobody would ever question Scorsese’s reputation. Unless they are on the internet.
In recent years, the director has become a target for insecure superhero movie fans, after he compared the genre to “theme park rides” instead of cinema. While these fans and their army of twitter bots have done nothing to diminish Scorsese’s reputation, a new challenger has entered the arena of public opinion: a casket salesperson. Twitter user @buyerasers has uncovered a review of Scorsese’s 2019 movie The Irishman, which savages the largely-praised gangster epic for its inaccurate portrayal of the burial business.
Posted on the website for Titan Caskets, the self-declared “most trusted casket company,” the takedown — which was double peer-reviewed! — points out three basic mistakes in The Irishman.
First, the author knocks Robert De Niro’s Frank Sheeran for buying a casket from the funeral home instead of purchasing it online. “Buying online from Titan Casket would have saved Robert De Niro at least $5,001,” the author notes. He backs up his claim with interesting information about a 1984 ruling from the FTC, but does not explain how Sheeran, the real-life hitman who died in 2003, would have ordered his casket from Titan, which did not exist until 2016.
Second, Sheeran breaks Titan’s sole motto and lets “an emotional loss into a financial loss.” Contrasting the company’s sales people to the pushy funeral home director played by Action Bronson, the author assures readers that they will only get “world class customer service” from Titan. Less is said about how saving money would assuage Sheeran’s guilt for killing so many people, including his friend Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), let alone distancing his daughter Peggy (Anna Paquin)
Finally, the author criticizes Sheeran for paying in cash for his casket. Had he used his credit card via Titan’s reliable website, Sheeran could have earned “valuable credit card points.” Honestly, they got Scorsese on this one. But the deleted scenes from Kundun do show the Dali Lama racking up those points, so The Irishman was just a one-off mistake.
If it isn’t clear at this point, the movie review isn’t a review at all. Instead, it’s a blog post advertising a product that most of us wouldn’t seek out on a regular basis. Be honest, have you heard of Titan Caskets before? Yet, here we are, spamming the site to read their thoughts about a three-year-old Netflix movie.
Really, Titan’s only mistake was failing to harness the power of angry superhero movie fans, who even ignore DC Studios head James Gunn calling Scorsese “the greatest living filmmaker.” Maybe the House Painters Union will keep this in mind when they write their Irishman review.
Written by
Joe George’s writing has appeared at Slate, Polygon, Tor.com, and elsewhere!