The first trail­er for Mar­tin Scorsese’s gang­ster epic The Irish­man is here

Few direc­tors com­mand atten­tion on the lev­el of a Mar­tin Scors­ese. When he has a new film com­ing out, whether you’re a cinephile or not, it’s a big deal. When that new film returns him to the gang­ster genre that is his wheel­house, and fea­tures a cast of heavy­weights includ­ing Robert De Niro, Al Paci­no, and Joe Pesci, then peo­ple start clear­ing their calendars.

Net­flix has unveiled the first trail­er for their hot­ly antic­i­pat­ed fall release The Irish­man, afford­ing curi­ous par­ties (both mor­bid­ly and not) the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get an eye­ful of the dig­i­tal­ly de-aged De Niro fea­tured in a seg­ment of the film. On a scale from one to Tom Han­ks in the Polar Express, this first look is not exact­ly encour­ag­ing. But Marty’s a known tin­ker­er, often fine-tun­ing his films mere days before a release or fes­ti­val première.

De Niro leads the film as Frank Sheer­an, a World War II vet turned mob enforcer upon his return from the front. (The film jumps between present-day De Niro as an aging, bit­ter Frank and his com­put­er­ized dop­pel­gänger dur­ing the spring-chick­en years.) Paci­no stars as Jim­my Hof­fa, the team­sters union’s leader who mys­te­ri­ous­ly van­ished in 1975, and Pesci sup­ports as Cosa Nos­tra crime boss Rus­sell Buffalino.

For those expect­ing noth­ing more than their favorite actors deliv­er­ing wiseguy dia­logue in smoky mid­cen­tu­ry rooms, the trail­er will sat­is­fy and then some. But for those with a set idea about what a Mar­tin Scors­ese pic­tures looks, behaves, and feels like, the new clip rais­es some concerns.

The film­mak­er has more than earned the ben­e­fit of the doubt, but some­thing about this trail­er has a chintzy imi­ta­tion-Scors­ese feel­ing much clos­er to one of the works he exec­u­tive-pro­duces than directs. (Think along the lines of Vinyl rather than The Wolf of Wall Street.) Those that ques­tion the mas­ter gen­er­al­ly wind up eat­ing their words, how­ev­er. Fac­to­ry-issue trail­er or no, cinephiles will be ready and wait­ing for the lat­est gospel of Scorsese.

The Irish­man will debut at the New York Film Fes­ti­val as the open­ing night selec­tion on 27 Sep­tem­ber, then get a glob­al release through Net­flix lat­er in the fall.