director
Martin Scorsese
screenwriter
William
Monahan
based on
a screenplay by
Alan Mak
Felix Chong
producers
Jennifer Aniston
Brad Grey
Graham King
Brad Pitt
Martin Scorsese
cinematographer
Michael Ballhaus
music
Howard Shore
editor
Thelma Schoonmaker
cast
Leonardo DiCaprio (Billy Costigan)
Matt Damon (Colin Sullivan)
Jack Nicholson (Frank Costello)
Mark Wahlberg (Dignam)
Martin Sheen (Oliver Queenan)
Ray Winstone (Mr. French)
Vera Farmiga (Madolyn)
Anthony Anderson (Brown)
Alec Baldwin (Ellerby)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 149m
u.s.
release: 10/6/06
video
availability: TBA
official
website
other martin
scorsese films
reviewed on this website:
- the
aviator
- bringing out the dead
- casino
- gangs of new york
- kundun
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The first two big hitters of
the Oscar-chasing season have stepped up to the plate. Brian
De Palma swung mightily and whiffed with The
Black Dahlia, and now Martin Scorsese manages a bunt
with The Departed -- though many critics disappointed
that De Palma didn't slam it out of the park are now pretending
that Scorsese has hit a home run. The truth is, Scorsese revisits
old territory in The Departed, and he doesn't do
anything he hasn't done brilliantly several times before, nor
does he discover anything fresh in the material. If all you want
is a violent Scorsese gangster picture, grab some popcorn. Personally,
I was a bit dispirited that the director found himself married
to the mob once again; of course, I also think Kundun
is his best movie of the last ten years, so I may be a little
out of the mainstream.
Scorsese and writer William
Monahan have remade the well-regarded 2002 Hong Kong action flick
Infernal Affairs. The premise remains the same:
The mob plants one of their guys in the police force, the cops
put one of their guys undercover in the mob, and the cat-and-mouse
sparks fly. Leonardo DiCaprio (Scorsese's go-to star in his past
three films) is the Donnie Brasco here; Matt Damon is the thug
groomed as one of Boston's finest. I suppose the locale and ethnicity
do represent something of a departure point for Scorsese; instead
of New York Italians, we have Boston Irish, which, as in so many
movies set in Beantown, means much ostentatious dropping of r's
(hometown boys Damon and Mark Wahlberg as an aggressively combative
cop come off best).
The Departed follows Damon and DiCaprio as they
strain to play their respective roles while trying to stay loyal
to their respective bosses; both also compete somewhat for the
favor of their shared mobster guardian, played by Jack Nicholson
as if he were Jack Nicholson playing a mobster -- he's done better
work, though he's getting lauded for his willingness to go freaky
and ugly (his best moment: he steps out and converses with someone
casually, his arms spattered with blood up to the elbows, and
the movie, in a rare instance of restraint, doesn't explain what
exactly he's been up to behind closed doors). The raw materials
are here for a fast, hard-driving thriller -- like Infernal
Affairs -- but Scorsese draws it out for a lumbering two
hours and twenty-nine minutes. Like his friend Spielberg, Scorsese
of late has been bitten by the overlength bug.
The length isn't the only problem.
Scorsese frames the proceedings with his customary dynamism,
but too much of it feels like a retread. For the third time in
a gangster movie, after GoodFellas and Casino,
Scorsese hauls out the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter"
(please, man, leave that song alone now) not once but
twice, the second time running irrelevantly underneath a conversation
between Damon and police shrink Vera Farmiga (who does what she
can in a thankless, unnecessary role). Scorsese's choice of music
here seems obvious and enervated, including a Van Morrison cover
of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" and Dropkick Murphys'
"I'm Shipping Up to Boston." It isn't just the music,
though -- even the brutality here feels rote, like a Scorsese
imitator. The Departed is an exercise for Scorsese, nothing
more. All the moves are there; the pulse is restless, but there's
no heart driving it.
After a while, people start
to die rapidly, and the movie becomes a nihilistic shooting gallery.
Someone is dropped out a window and lands right at DiCaprio's
feet, gore spraying his shirt. Jack Nicholson gets dirtier and
funkier until he seems ready to cave in under the weight of his
own decadence. Much of The Departed's final hour was an
unimpressive blur for me, a parade of narrative "cleverness"
resulting in massacres, better suited to the legions of Scorsese
wannabes than to the maestro himself. The Oscar talk has already
begun; how deeply sad, yet predictable, it would be if Scorsese
finally won that long-elusive Best Director trophy for this self-derivative
mess. According to legend, the young Scorsese once showed indie-film
godhead John Cassavetes his second feature and first mainstream
effort, 1972's Boxcar Bertha, and Cassavetes commented,
"It's good work, but you just spent a year of your life
making a piece of shit." Ah, where is honest old John now?
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