Country: United States
Genre: Drama
Director: Martin Scorcese
Year: 2006
Rating: 
Also known as The Retarded, Martin Scorcese’s Oscar winning bauble is reminiscent in tone of his other great triumph at the box office, Cape Rear–oops, I meant Cape Fear
The Departed
Basically, all you need to know about Departed as far as plot goes is this: an undercover Boston cop and an Irish gangster have infiltrated each other’s organizations at the highest levels, their bosses know there’s a mole in the ranks, and they’ve been assigned to smoke each other out. What follows is a game of dimwits…uh wits.
Oh, it’s a great premise all right, but where Infernal Affairs is nervewracking, The Departed is nothing but pudwhacking.
All of the changes in the script are a disimprovement compared to the original. In Infernal Affairs, the story takes place over several years. In The Departed, it’s something like five months, hardly enough time for someone to infiltrate a donut shop, much less an Irish gang with a supposedly paranoid boss. The constant cursing is moronic, not realistic. In fact, practically all of the dialog (except for the lines directly plagiarized from Infernal Affairs) rings false. The plotting, where it diverges from the original, seems desperate rather than clever. I could go on, but what’s the point?
Compare that to Infernal Affairs. The plot is like a fine Swiss watch. There are no extra parts to gum up the works. Like all Hong Kong noirs these days, Infernal Affairs is cool, calm and collected. Andy Lau and Tony Leung Chiu Wai play the gangster and cop respectively. Each is a model of subtlety, playing their strategic cellphone games with the elan of a Sean Connery (back when he was playing James Bond, before he became a caricature of himself). You might see these guys suffer, but they never break a sweat. The tension is all but unbearable.
On the other hand, The Departed is pitched at the level of hysteria from the very beginning. Part of the problem is Scorcese’s inexplicable infatuation with Leonardo DiCaprio. To see what I mean, compare DeCaprio side by side with Scorcese’s other muse, Robert Deniro (before he became a buffoon). One seems like he fell out of the nest at the age of 35, the other gave the impression of a lifetime’s worth of hard knocks at the same age. DiCaprio works overtime to convey a gravitas he just doesn’t have. He sweats, he grimaces, he shamelessly mugs his way through the picture.
Don’t even get me started on that canned ham Jack Nicholson. It’s long past time for you to retire, Jack.
Man, I’ve got to find something nice to say. Alec Baldwin is amusing in a tiny, utterly extraneous cameo as the foulmouthed Captain Ellerby, but only because Baldwin is such an effective comic actor. The Departed is a waste of his talent. To see Alec Baldwin really strut his stuff, check out his role as a Las Vegas casino boss in The Cooler some time.
Matt Damon seems like he might be a good choice for the role of the gangster who infiltrates the Boston police department, at least on paper. Certainly he brilliantly pulled off the same sort of moral complexity that’s called for here in The Talented Mr. Ripley
Once the greatest of American directors, Scorcese has turned into a major hack. Can this be the same man who directed Goodfellas, the second greatest gangster movie of all time, right behind The Godfather
Scorcese directed Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
Bring me my barf bag.
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Comments
This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 4:07 pm and is filed under Classics That I Hate, Movie Reviews By Country. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Ooooh, I wouldn’t want to get YOU mad, lol !