The real runtime for Martin Scorsese's The Irishman is officially revealed. Scorsese's latest crime drama is one of the few Oscar hopefuls yet to be seen, but that's going to change in the near future. The Irishman will hold its world premiere at the New York Film Festival this week, and cinephiles will finally see if the film lives up to its on-paper potential. Audiences have been anticipating The Irishman for a while; not only does it reunite Scorsese with his old muse, Robert De Niro, it's also making ambitious use of de-aging technology for the entire first half. Many are curious to see how this one plays out.

Scorsese is a director known for his protracted runtimes, and a couple of his latest films have been very long. Religious drama Silence was more than two and a half hours, while The Wolf of Wall Street hit the three-hour mark. When The Irishman first appeared on the New York Film Festival's official website, its running time was listed as a whopping 210 minutes. However, that was later removed, indicating some changes needed to be made. Scorsese is now done editing the picture, and the film's real runtime is finally revealed.

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The NYFF website updated their Irishman listing to say the film runs 209 minutes, making it one minute shorter than the original run time. This makes the crime epic nearly three and a half hours in length.

The Irishman First Look

In the event The Irishman falls short of expectations, it could possibly be a chore to sit through (even for the most dedicated Scorsese fans). Fortunately, there are a few factors that point to The Irishman being a treat to watch. Rotten Tomatoes looked at the numbers and determined films that are 140 minutes or longer are most likely to be rated Fresh in their system. Obviously, that doesn't guarantee The Irishman will be good, but it illustrates a correlation between longer runtimes and high quality. Additionally, Scorsese's been making movies like this for most of his career, and has long proven to be a master of pacing. His films (especially the ones in the crime genre) tend to have a high energy that make them engaging and fly by. Ideally, that will be this case for The Irishman, which seems exactly like the kind of film that will benefit from a three-hour runtime.

Netflix has a lot invested in The Irishman (the production budget wasn't cheap), so the streaming giant is hoping things turn out well. Some of the company's other original films this year, like Marriage Story and The Two Popes, look to be surefire players on the Oscar circuit, but all eyes have been on The Irishman since it was announced. Scorsese frequently finds his films in the thick of the awards race, so at this point it would be surprising if The Irishman faltered. The 209-minute runtime sounds like a major hurdle for audiences (there were questions about theatrical intermissions for the shorter Avengers: Endgame earlier this year), but everyone - especially Academy voters - will be interested in checking out Scorsese's latest. And for cinephiles, The Irishman being a three and a half hour epic might be a dream come true.

More: Screen Rant's Fall 2019 Movie Preview

Source: NYFF

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