I've got to laugh. De Niro is a one dimensional over rated actor. Plays the same character in every movie.
That may be more due to the roles he's offered.
In most of his roles, he's either a mobster or a nut. Many years ago, I was coerced into seeing "Stanley & Iris" and it was a completely different sort of role. Another role that comes to mind was when he played the honest, bus driving father in "A Bronx Tale."
If you check with IMDB, you'll see that he's actually played a lot of different characters in many different roles, it's just that his most "popular" roles have been either mobsters or nuts. How about his "HVAC Terrorist" role in Terry Gilliam's "Brazil?"
Mark
Seriously? You must be the only person I've met who would consider Bruce Pearson the talented redneck baseball player, Travis Bickle the low-key cab driver pushed too far, Mike Vronsky the dead serious Russian-American army Sergent, Vito Corleone the rising young Italian mobster, Jake LaMotta the out of control brutal boxer, Rupert Pumpkin the eccentric obsessed fan, Leonard Lowe the naive sweet recovering coma patience, and Dr. Frankenstein's tormented creation to all be "the same character" and the same type of performance from De Niro. Everyone else feels that's an INCREDIBLE acting range he had during the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
Unfortunately, you could make a good case that he's "phoned it in" SINCE then, and has been content to make silly mafia comedies and forgettable action movies for the last decade.
Bottom line: De Niro needs to get back to making real movies, and Scorsese needs to get back to casting real actors.
It's an old story. But certainly DeNiro was more creative and adventurous in his great days than a lot of other actors who ended up in the same kind of rut.
De Niro in casino, godfather, and taxi driver same characters, sure thing.