How did Robert De Niro end up at The Whisper Man? De Niro, the man who personified the gold standard of screen acting for the last three decades of the 20th century, has already survived one career slump, that wayward spell in the 2000s that saw him terrorise a CGI moose in The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, sleep with the fishes in Shark Tale, and, of course, meet the dubiously amusing Fockers, both big and Little.
Consensus is that his career started to uptick in the years since, thanks partly to his collaborations with auteur filmmakers David O Russell (2012’s Silver Linings Playbook; 2015’s Joy), Nancy Meyers (2015’s The Intern), and, most convincingly, Martin Scorsese (2019’s The Irishman and 2023’s Killers of the Flower Moon). In the two Scorsese films particularly – reactivating a collaboration that had decades earlier yielded career-best work for both parties – De Niro was an artist reborn, producing sophisticated character work with rich, heavyweight material.
