Watch Robert De Niro Go to Work in Epic First Teaser for Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman

At long last, our first substantive look at Martin Scorsese’s much-anticipated organized-crime epic The Irishman has arrived. The footage offers us a revealing preview of the film’s de-aging effects, as well as its ambitious scope—The Irishman is, indeed, the story of its eponymous hitman Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) and his lethal exploits, but it’s also much more.

The Irishman’s official synopsis describes the film as “an epic saga of organized crime in post-war America told through the eyes of World War II veteran Frank Sheeran, a hustler and hitman who worked alongside some of the most notorious figures of the 20th century.” Hollywood legends Al Pacino and Joe Pesci portray two of those notorious figures, Jimmy Hoffa and Russell Bufalino, respectively; it’s through crime family head Bufalino that Italian mob-approved Irishman Sheeran is introduced to labor union leader Hoffa, who recruits him to “paint houses” for the cause.

As the whirlwind teaser shows us, that fateful connection is only the beginning: Sheeran finds himself embroiled in a large-scale conflict between Hoffa’s cohort, “big business and the government,” which will somehow culminate in President John F. Kennedy’s assassination—meanwhile, the seeds of doubt are sown about Hoffa’s trustworthiness, with Pesci expertly delivering a classically cryptic mafioso threat as Bufalino: “You might be demonstrating a failure to show appreciation,” he warns. It all adds up to “a monumental journey through the hidden corridors of organized crime: its inner workings, rivalries and connections to mainstream politics,” and perhaps mob movie master Scorsese’s definitive statement on a subject he’s been wrangling his whole career.