I never really liked the mob genre. I liked various mob films because they're well made stories, Irishman included, but the nature of the medium is that it frames the mob desirably and I don't buy into that. That's why even the best of the genre, which are lauded as some of the best films ever made like Godfather Parts 1 and 2 don't have the same punch for me. Whereas others see Michael Corleone some deep character study or fall from grace, all I see is assholes who delude themselves that their business of mundane murder is anything more than that. There is good storytelling in them, but it's storytelling inservice of a myth that falls apart under very minor scrutiny in my eyes, but somehow enthralls everyone else. I can't buy into the fantasy of the mob.
And this applies here too. The Irishman, Frank? He's just a low key sociopath. Like, he's not the unstable, Joffrey sort that revels in pain, but he's the type that simply doesn't care, and he this is most demonstrated in the end, where the priest is trying to ask him if he regrets anything, and he seems outright confused by the concept. He doesn't like how some things turned out, but he doesn't have any kind of emotional aversion to them that we typically associate with regret, but it's also present in how he talks with curiosity, but without empathy, when he was told to murder prisoners of war.
And that also clearly goes for his 'good friend' Jimmy Hoffa too. What did he murder Jimmy for, when it's all said and done? Nothing, really. Jimmy wasn't hurting him in any way, and if there really was no choice, Frank could have passed the job onto someone else so he didn't have to be the one to murder his friend. Jimmy had to die because the mafia was having problems with his union and he refused to let go out of stubbornness and....and that's it. Jimmy died for petty, stupid reasons. And how did he die? With two shots to the back of his head, like anyone else, without remorse or emotion.
And your all telling me it's sad that Frank doesn't get to have a good relationship with his daughter? No, it's not. It's good. If you step back and look at what kind of character and what kind of father Frank had been to his daughters and empathize with the kind of upbringing they had, if you were to read this story in a new article, "Elderly mob hitman feels sad he can't have a normal relationship with his daughter", you wouldn't think "Wow, that's so sad, he's just trying to be a good dad." But like every mob movie ever, it puts the framing of these cold murderers as the front and center, while their family members are just in the periphery.
Just to be clear, I'm not trying to have a go at anyone over feeling sympathy for Frank. It's a movie, it's art, you feel what you want to feel. I'm just expressing my frustration with the broader genre and why I can't connect with it in general nor this movie in specific. I still like the movie, the pacing is tight for how long it is, it's entertaining to watch these actors, it's well shot, etc, etc, but emotionally, for me to feel empathy for these characters, I have to buy into their worldview, and I haven't watched a mob movie that has succeeded in getting me to do that.
For me, Frank's ending is neither sad nor happy. It's not sad because fuck Frank. But it's not happy because there's no actual good that comes out of seeing Frank miserable either. I don't really care about his daughters because the film doesn't bother developing their characters beyond just being one of the few non-mob people cares about without actually giving them any personality or motivation or presence except as an extension of Frank. So I just end up feeling a whole lot of nothing. The craft is good, the storytelling well told, but as with most mob movies, I don't care about any of these people.