Crime drama. R. 1 hour, 46 minutes. At the Denver FilmCenter/Colfax.
Hey, “Kill the Irishman,” “The Sopranos” called. It wants its actors back — along with everything else you borrowed.
Although “Irishman” is based on the true story of an Irish-American thug who ran afoul of the Cleveland mafia in the ’60s and ’70s, much of it — the themes it tries to develop, the macabre sense of humor and the cast — seems to have been directly imported from HBO’s classic series.
Like Tony Soprano, Danny Greene is a tough lug who tries, mostly without success, to balance his violent work life with romance, family and friendship. Even several plot points, including an attempt to bust up a garbage-collection monopoly, will be familiar to fans of the series.
Admittedly, it’s likely “Sopranos” swiped plots from the real-life Greene, rather than vice versa, but it’s more the way the film tries to use those details than the details themselves that feels so familiar.
More damaging still is the absence of characterizations, inattention to the passage of time and the oddity of narration by Val Kilmer as a cop whose childhood friendship with Greene (Ray Stevenson, whose charisma is the movie’s biggest asset) the film can’t convince us is interesting or significant.
Much of the time, “Kill the Irishman” seems content to revel in different ways of blowing up vintage automobiles (in the Cleveland of the ’70s, the No. 1 cause of death appears to have been inserting a key into the ignition of your car).
Maybe because that’s the one thing “Irishman” has that “The Sopranos” didn’t use very often?
