Lucy Gallina......amidst all the powerhouse performances of Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, this little child actress upstaged them all........without barely saying three words of dialogue or any radical change of expressions.
Playing Peggy, one of the daughters of career mob hitman Frank Sherran (De Niro), she's forever changed by a pivotal incident in her childhood. When Frank hears of a neighborhood grocer impatiently shoving Peggy, he escorts the child back to the store.......where she can witness her father dragging the grocer out into the street and give him a brutal mob-worthy beating.
From that point on, through Frank's long lifetime of bombings, beatings and murders, we mostly remember those distinctive, silent moments when father and daughter contemplate each other across the kitchen table. De Niro stops reading the newspaper when he catches Gallina staring at him.........in her unforgiving gaze, she knows her father better than he knows himself. In her eyes you can see at once the mixture of curiosity, palpable fear and true loathing.
Later in the film, as Peggy ages into a teen and an adult, Gallina's replaced by Anna Paquin, who continues that thousand-mile stare at her father.......a weaponized look of both dread and disgust.
By the time De Niro's character survives into his 80's, all his daughters are estranged from him and Peggy turns her back at the very sight of him.........De Niro's toll of becoming a monster to his own family.
Call us odd (it won't be the first time), but even with all the dramatic fireworks generated by the film's three stars, (enough for 1000 4rth of Julys), those quiet,kitchen table scenes between De Niro and Gallina still stay with us.........and part of what makes "The Irishman" a 4 star (****) epic.....
We'll leave the praise for De Niro, Pesci and Pacino to everybody else...…..at the BQ, we say,...….bravo, Lucy. You made us remember your scenes more than anything else in the film...…..
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