In defence of Robert De Niro

It’s not just the title of Mar­tin Scorsese’s bril­liant, excru­ci­at­ing tale of artis­tic delu­sion, The King of Com­e­dy, that ret­ro­spec­tive­ly takes on a sense of trag­ic irony when viewed in the con­text of its star’s career. There’s a shot of Robert De Niro’s anti-hero, Rupert Pup­kin, prac­tic­ing his stand-up rou­tine in front of a mur­al of mirth­ful faces, canned stu­dio-laugh­ter drown­ing out his words. As Scorsese’s cam­era slow­ly pulls back, iso­lat­ing Pup­kin in the cen­tre of the frame, empa­thy shifts to sym­pa­thy and then to pity as the laugh­ter takes on a cru­el, uncom­fort­able tone.

Viewed today, through the prism of De Niro’s more recent exploits, this shot becomes a kind of metaphor­i­cal time-lapse of the actor’s post-mil­len­ni­um career; begin­ning at the turn of the cen­tu­ry with Analyse This and Meet the Par­ents and end­ing in the bar­ren comedic waste­land of Dirty Grand­pa.

Few would argue with De Niro’s ​’70s and ear­ly ​’80s out­put, a near-unbro­ken string of crit­i­cal suc­cess­es that began with a trip­tych for Bri­an De Pal­ma and arguably peaked with his Oscar-win­ning turn in Rag­ing Bull, the fourth of eight col­lab­o­ra­tions with Scors­ese. Those films are now more 30 years old, and while the rest of the ​’80s and ​’90s saw as much good work as bad – a hit rate on a par with any of his con­tem­po­raries – De Niro rarely deliv­ered a for­get­table performance.

Then some­thing happened.

Pre­vi­ous attempts to exer­cise his fun­ny bone came with vary­ing degrees of suc­cess: The King of Com­e­dy stands along­side De Niro’s best work while Mid­night Run proved his sharp sense of tight­ly-wound tim­ing as the straight-half of a mem­o­rable comedic dou­ble-act. And if We’re No Angels and Mis­tress deserve their place as foot­notes on the actor’s CV, his work for John McNaughton (Mad Dog, Glo­ry) and Bar­ry Levin­son (Wag the Dog, What Just Hap­pened) remains per­fect­ly respectable.

As The Telegraph’s Rob­bie Collin point­ed out in his recent piece on De Niro’s come­dies, Ana­lyze This and Meet the Par­ents – the two films often seen as the begin­ning of the down­ward shift – real­ly are bet­ter than you might recall, the actor game­ly will­ing to mine the self-seri­ous tropes of his on-screen per­sona for laughs. The films made a for­tune, bring­ing the kind of returns unseen in his career to date. The afock­er­lyp­ti­cal­ly awful sequels – with De Niro was pro­duc­ing – were a no-brain­er, their glob­al box office num­bers cement­ing the actor’s posi­tion as a bank­able play­er in main­stream com­e­dy. Yet while the likes of Analyse That, The Fam­i­ly and Last Vegas dom­i­nat­ed the fol­low­ing decade and a half in terms of high-pro­file vis­i­bil­i­ty, De Niro’s come­dies account for bare­ly a third of his out­put post-2000.

He has appeared in a stag­ger­ing 38 films in the past 15 years, a lot by anyone’s stan­dard, but then De Niro has always main­tained a com­mit­ted work eth­ic. Per­haps it’s a mea­sure of the esteem in which his canon­i­cal per­for­mances are held that his recent work elic­its such an affront­ed sense of indig­na­tion from even the most casu­al movie­go­er. Audi­ences appear to be more will­ing to for­give and for­get the likes of Michael Dou­glas (You, Me & Dupree; And So It Goes), Jack Nichol­son (The Buck­et List; How Do You Know) or Diane Keaton (Dar­ling Com­pan­ion; Christ­mas With the Coop­ers) their low-brow indis­cre­tions. I can sit through a string of late Bran­do films and laugh them off with a what-is-he-like? shrug. Even Al Paci­no just about gets a pass by force of per­son­al­i­ty alone. With De Niro, peo­ple seem to take his fail­ures personally.

Revis­it­ing The Hate­ful 38 in the wake of the slew of invec­tives thrown De Niro’s way upon the release of Dirty Grand­pa proved an eye-open­ing expe­ri­ence, serv­ing to both solid­i­fy and dis­avow me of a num­ber of prej­u­dices. There’s no escap­ing the fact that, for the most part, the films aren’t very good. In fact, I can count on one hand those which I would ever wish to revis­it; and while it’s impos­si­ble to make any kind of sweep­ing gen­er­al­i­sa­tion as to why the films don’t work, view­ing them togeth­er always brings me back to the choic­es of their one uni­fy­ing component.

What is abun­dant­ly clear is that De Niro always brings some­thing to the table, no mat­ter how bad the film is. The notion that he no longer gives a shit is – to these eyes at least – non­sense. Which isn’t to say that he’s always good – some of his most com­mit­ted per­for­mances (Being Fly­nn) are among his most mis­er­able and affect­ed, while some of his very worst films (15 Min­utes) are made just about bear­able by virtue of his characterisation.

It’s easy to be face­tious when pre­sum­ing to sec­ond-guess De Niro’s rea$ons for work­ing on a giv­en project, but most appear to have offered at least some poten­tial on paper, irre­spec­tive of how they turned out. Even his lega­cy-fla­gel­lat­ing pas­sion project, The Adven­tures of Rocky & Bull­win­kle, deserves some slack giv­en the age of De Niro’s kids when he made it. (The argu­ment that they deserved bet­ter is duly noted.)

Yet there’s no escap­ing the inat­ten­tion paid to many of his films on script-lev­el – his will­ing­ness to take on roles cry­ing out for a sec­ond-draft. The clear­est con­stant of these late-peri­od films is that the qual­i­ty of De Niro’s per­for­mance is direct­ly pro­por­tion­ate to the qual­i­ty of what he has to work with. Unlike Paci­no, De Niro has nev­er been the kind of actor who can mask the inad­e­qua­cies of the mate­r­i­al with his own charis­ma – he’s nev­er been able to blag it. The sto­ries of his method-like immer­sion in his great roles of yes­ter­year speak of total inhab­i­ta­tion of the char­ac­ter, of los­ing him­self in some­one else.

In a 2012 inter­view with The New York Times, De Niro sug­gest­ed that those days are well behind him: ​“When I’m in it, I’ve already decid­ed I’m going to work with the direc­tors, so we have an under­stand­ing of what’s going to hap­pen. I don’t get into these long-wind­ed heavy dis­cus­sions about char­ac­ter – do we do this or that or what. At the end of the day, what you got­ta do is just go out there and do it. And the direc­tor respects what they’ve hired you for and cho­sen you for: to do the part and respect what you’re doing.”

That respect for the part is there in Dirty Grand­pa, even if it’s fright­en­ing to see quite how com­mit­ted De Niro is to such a repel­lent role. Yet give him a fight­ing chance with the right mate­r­i­al and flash­es of the old genius are still there to be found. It’s a shame that there aren’t more film­mak­ers like David O Rus­sell, will­ing to feed De Niro the kind of meaty char­ac­ter actor parts on which he thrives (see: Joy, Amer­i­can Hus­tle, Sil­ver Lin­ings Play­book). Look­ing back at ear­li­er films like City by the Sea or Stone, it’s invig­o­rat­ing to see the effect a decent script and a strong per­for­mance to play against (from Frances McDor­mand and Edward Nor­ton respec­tive­ly) have on upping his game.

Per­haps it’s also the case that De Niro has become un-directable, at least among the job­bing hacks and up-and-com­ers who pop­u­late the cred­its of much of his lat­er out­put. The NYT inter­view seems to con­firm as much: ​“Leave me to get on with it.” Com­pare the cof­fee shop scene in Heat with its knock-off equiv­a­lent in the dire De Niro/​Pacino reunion, Right­eous Kill, and you’ll notice the dif­fer­ence hav­ing a strong hand behind the cam­era makes to both actors.

The release of Dirty Grand­pa has led to calls for De Niro to retire, which, con­sid­er­ing how much he embar­rass­es him­self in the film, is an under­stand­able knee-jerk response. (If any­thing, it’d be great to see him back behind the cam­era, hon­ing the admirable sense of time and place he brought to the small, per­son­al A Bronx Tale and the sprawl­ing CIA-epic, The Good Shep­herd.) But per­haps it’s ulti­mate­ly a lit­tle ungen­er­ous to com­plain about any­thing he’s doing now giv­en the rich cin­e­mat­ic lega­cy he will leave behind. Robert De Niro owes us noth­ing. He’s 73 this year, and if he wants to spend a few months in Flori­da with his thumb up Zac Efron’s arse, well, we reck­on he’s earned it.