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Recap / The Irishman

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In 2003, the elderly Frank Sheeran sits among the other residents of a dingy nursing home and begins to tell his life story. He starts in 1975, when the daughter of the mob lawyer Bill Bufalino is getting married and Frank accepts the job of driving Bill's cousin Russell from Philadelphia to Detroit for it. Their wives Reenie and Carrie take a smoke break, which Frank points out happens to be near the gas station where he and Russell first met.

In the 1950s, Frank is a truck driver for a meat company, and pulls into the gas station with engine trouble. Russell helps him fix the problem, with Frank only learning later he's a gangster who owns the whole road. After making the delivery, one of the restaurant employees points him toward Skinny Razor, a bookie who could help him make lucrative connections. Frank is soon making illicit deliveries to Skinny, which after a couple months gets him fired.

Bill Bufalino takes Frank's case, and somehow manages to sway the judge enough to end up admonishing the plaintiffs. Frank's refusal to name his conspirators makes a good name for him in the union, and he again meets Russell when Bill introduces his cousin. Frank notices Russell is talking with Angelo Bruno, the biggest mob boss in Philadelphia, and realizes he's in the business too. He shares with Russell how he illegally executed prisoners during World War II, which gets Russell and even Angelo to start giving him jobs.

Frank describes how Carrie's family was "mob royalty," as Russell comes home from a job soaked in blood, to which she doesn't bat an eye and simply tells him to wash up. He goes on to explain how Russell operated out of a drape shop, taking any problem that came his way and insisting the person bringing it took care of it themselves, while also doing his best to avoid an open mob war.

Frank takes a job from Skinny to bring around someone who owes him money, and is given a gun for the first time, though he's told to not actually use it. Upon getting home he learns from his wife (not Reenie) the local grocer shoved his daughter Peggy for knocking something over, and brutally beats the man and breaks his hand as Peggy watches in horror. That night, the family has an uneasy silent dinner as everyone contemplates the kind of person Frank is becoming.

Frank and his wife have a second daughter, which requires him to start making more money. He's approached by Whispers DiTullio to blow up a laundromat encroaching on his business, though he doesn't offer the full payment up front and is oddly insistent no one else needs to know. Before heading out on the job he's called to a meeting with Angelo, who reveals he owns the laundromat, and would have let Frank walk into the trap if not for Russell speaking up for him. Frank quickly makes up for it by killing Whispers, leading to another accusing look from Peggy when the murder is reported.

The Whispers job leads to Frank moving up in the mob world and getting more dangerous but lucrative assignments, and during a dinner with several top level gangsters he meets Reenie as a waitress, and before long leaves his wife for her.

Shortly after Frank's divorce, Russell is dismayed at Peggy seeming to be scared of both him and her father, and advises Frank to make sure to stay close to his family. The talk turns to business, as the Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa is having increasing trouble with murder attempts and needs the help of someone like Frank. After a single phone call, Hoffa easily agrees.

Frank gets his first job from Hoffa's associate Joey, to take care of a cab company moving in on the truckers. Frank leads a team to destroy all the cabs overnight, to which Joey effusively sings his praises at a meeting with Hoffa. At the meeting's end, Frank notices Hoffa doesn't close his door completely.

As the work continues, Frank and Reenie become good friends with Hoffa and his wife Jo, and even Peggy becomes very close to Hoffa in stark contrast to her behavior with Russell. The teamsters act as the mob's bank, playing a large role in building Las Vegas and even getting John Kennedy elected president so he'd open up Cuba for them again.

Kennedy makes his brother Robert attorney general, and he promptly goes after organized crime, with a special vendetta against Hoffa. He gets his break when some of Hoffa's subordinates arrange an obvious conflict of interest deal with a gangster's son, and Hoffa's explosion at them nearly causes Frank to quit until Hoffa assures him he wasn't included in the insults. Russell gets Frank involved in a complex driving operation to arm the Bay of Pigs invasion, only for it to fail and lead the Kennedys to focus on Hoffa again.

Frank heads to a union speech with Hoffa, with Peggy catching him packing a gun on the way out. Hoffa introduces the union to his vice president Frank Fitzsimmons (Fitz), who Frank isn't impressed by. Hoffa retorts that the only person he's really worried about is rival union leader Tony Provanzano, and proposes to rig an election to make Frank another local president. Soon he's giving the same advice to young drivers that Bill once gave to him about not giving names.

Hoffa is brought to trial, and a man attempts to kill him right in the courtroom but the gun jams, and Hoffa's son Chuck beats him up. Hoffa calls Frank to come down, though he ends up mostly just watching the news about the Cuban Missile Crisis while Bill leads Hoffa's men in jury and witness tampering. After Hoffa is cleared, their celebration is interrupted by news of Kennedy's assassination.

Bobby Kennedy's vendetta against Hoffa is ended by his brother's death, but Hoffa still gets sent to prison due to the tampering with the previous trial. He still runs the union through Fitz, who learns to play ball after Frank stages an assassination attempt on fellow union leader Allan Dorfman. Tony is also arrested for extortion and ends up in the same prison, where he's enraged at Hoffa's refusal to help him get his union pension back and tries to beat him to death before the guards pull them apart.

"Crazy Joe" Gallo makes enemies of a large part of the mob through his exceptionally public executions and flaunting the lifestyle, and breaks the last straw when he insults Russell for supporting the Italian-American Anti-Defamation League. Frank executes him while he's at a restaurant with his family, and while watching the news report on it, the now adult Peggy once again looks accusingly at him.

Four years later, Hoffa is pardoned by President Nixon after a sizable campaign contribution, only to find Fitz is running for president of the union and now enjoys much of Hoffa's former popularity. He needs to ask Tony for votes to get the job back, but the meeting quickly goes south with petty insults that build until they get into another fight.

Frank and Russell go to "Fat Tony" Salerno for help, but he'll only agree to not stand in Hoffa's way rather than actively help him. Hoffa responds by publicly attacking Fitz, starting an increasingly violent feud between them. Hoffa also publicly calls out the mob, ending his support from them. But he still insists on presenting Frank with a union award with everyone there. At the presentation, Fat Tony tells Russell that Hoffa is interfering with everyone's payments, and Russell and Frank both fail to convince him to stop, Hoffa believing his stash of evidence against numerous gangsters will protect him. Peggy watches the whole thing, disapproving as usual.

The story has now caught up to the 1975 wedding, which is revealed to actually be a last-ditch attempt to save Hoffa, who eventually agrees to another meeting with Tony. However, Russell soon informs Frank the mob has decided he has to die, and Frank himself has even been made part of the hit so he wouldn't try to stop it. After enduring the slow preparation for the task, with no one else, even Chuck, having any emotional reaction to it, Frank himself takes Hoffa into the trap they've set up and kills him.

Two days later, Frank watches the news about Hoffa's disappearance with his family, and says he should call Jo. Peggy asks why he hasn't done it yet, clearly suspecting the truth, and in the nursing home Frank says she never said another word to him from that moment. As Frank lies to Jo about knowing nothing, Hoffa's body is destroyed in an incinerator.

No one is ever prosecuted for the murder due to the lack of evidence, but everyone involved ends up with long prison sentences anyway for their various other criminal actions shortly afterward. They all grow older and more pathetic, until Frank and Russell are reduced to softening their bread in juice in a sad throwback to their glamorous first meeting. Russell dies shortly afterward.

Frank is released shortly afterward, just in time for Reenie's death from lung cancer. Peggy refuses to even look at him during the funeral. Now old and infirm, he can't live by himself and moves into the nursing home. He makes one last attempt to talk to Peggy at the bank where she works, but upon seeing him she leaves her desk without a word. His other daughter Dolores also refuses to forgive him, and he's reduced to making the arrangements for his own funeral.

Federal agents attempt to get Frank to talk about the Hoffa murder now that anyone he could be protecting is dead, but he still refuses, and upon seeing a priest says he doesn't feel any remorse despite wanting to return to his faith. He shows his nurse old pictures of his family, and finds she has no idea who Hoffa was, underlining how little any of his life meant in the end. After a late night visit with the priest on the night he'll die, he asks that his door be left slightly open, just like Hoffa used to do.


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