My problems with The Departed (open spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

Boy, if the recent threads are any indication, everyone sure seems to love this movie except my roommate and I, who were exceptionally disappointed when we went to see it. Basically, I thought the narrative was just a mess in many places, and it really took me out of the film. I never thought I’d be saying this about a two-and-a-half hour film, but it could have been longer, in order to explain some of the seemingly glaring plot holes and inconsistencies. That, or much, much tighter. Here are some of my issues; I welcome correction, critique, or general derision flung my way. :slight_smile:

First, a lot of the subplot romance between Matt Damon’s character and the shrink felt really disjointed, particularly the back-to-back scenes in which (1) they apparently make the decision, in bed, that they need to break up, and (2) the next time we see them together, she’s showing him an ultrasound and telling him joyfully that it’s a boy. Um…okay. An arc does not mean progressing from point D to point not-D without any real storytelling. The scene with her and Leo in her old place also felt kind of randomly put into the movie at that point, especially given the presence of that photo on the wall after she’d already taken it to Matt Damon’s. (Yeah, you can fanwank that away by saying that she was hurt that he didn’t want to put it up, and so she took it back to her old place and hung it up
again there, but if that’s the case I’d have appreciated some cutscene to that effect, however brief.)

In addition, it felt like there was a huge chunk missing that explained why Leo’s character decided to blithely cooperate with the strange man who called him on Martin Sheen’s phone, who wouldn’t let him speak to Mark Wahlberg, and who asked him to come down to the station (something that was, justifiably, a huge red flag), after initially and correctly hanging up on the guy.

Also, I totally didn’t buy the circumstances surrounding – and following – Martin Sheen’s character’s death. First of all, murdering a police captain in cold blood is a really big deal, even for gangsters, and I find it exceptionally hard to believe that they would have no compunction about doing that (particularly when it seems that torturing him for information would far better accomplish their goal). Second of all, murdering a police captain is a REALLY BIG DEAL. Not to mention the subsequent shootout. And there was no question about whose gang did the deed. If the movie was to have any semblance of realism, Costello’s entire crew would have been hauled downtown, beat up, and almost certainly arrested…including Costello himself.

Furthermore, the plot point about Costello being an FBI informer didn’t really make sense. Exactly what, or who, is he supposed to have been informing them about? Sure, he was giving up his guys…I got that part. But that kind of arrangement wouldn’t benefit the FBI unless they were on the trail of bigger fish, not smaller ones. Scorcese gave no indication whatsoever that Costello might have been informing about something bigger than himself. This is one of those things that could probably have been solved with a throwaway line or two…but still, give us those throwaway lines.

Finally, leaving aside how absolutely blatantly Matt Damon’s character reported to Costello throughout the movie, how fucking hard would it have been to ID DiCaprio’s character as the rat? Unlike the teeming dozens who worked at SIU, it wasn’t as if Costello had a myriad of people under him, at least not that we saw. Seems like there were five or six at most. And when one of those is “the new
guy” (as Damon stated when he identified him on camera during the microprocessor scene) who got kicked out of the police academy…it doesn’t take a genius. And this is particularly true after Damon actually speaks with Leo on the phone. Hmm, from his voice it’s obvious that he’s a Bostonian in his twenties. That lets out the Irish guy, and it lets out all the guys who are approaching fifty! And, in Costello’s regular crew, that leaves… Hmm. And yet Damon seemed genuinely surprised by Leo’s identity later on.

It was an enjoyable enough popcorn movie, I guess, but I don’t think it stands up to any kind of close scrutiny at all. I hate sloppy narratives.

2

I take it everyone agrees with me entirely. :slight_smile:

3

I do. It was convoluted and utterly implausible. To compare it to Goodfellas is a joke. It’s just not a very good or even convincing movie.

4

Well, that’s two of us, then. But I’m passing certain that there was a long-ass thread just a couple weeks ago about how wonderful this movie was.

5

I think subconsciously I think it was better than it actually was, because subconsciously I wanted it to be really good so that Scorsese can get an Oscar- maybe some others feel the same?

6

I really enjoyed it although I admit I don’t delve that deeply into plots unless they make no sense at all. I pretty much enjoy most movies I see.

My problem with the movie, if I could call it a problem was the ending with the Mark Wahlberg character. That made no sense to me.

I’m sure they’ll come out with a super deluxe DVD with different endings which pisses me off. Sometimes I think they make the movie a little crappy on purpose so they can sell the DVD version.

7

I don’t get why the 2nd mole is made aware of who Sullivan is but not the other way round, how he knows to rescue Sullivan from the building, why he wants to rescue him as he’s pretty much clean, and why Costello made no backup recordings of his conversations with mole#2.

I do let most things like that slide though, and I thought it wa a damn good movie.

8

All excellent points. Do you have any thoughts on the problems I raise? 'Cause those were what was preventing it from being a damn good movie to me. :slight_smile:

9

I’ll tell you right off that I really enjoyed tehmovie, but I’m not always the most discerning film critic, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

As much as I liked it I did have a few problems with it.

  1. I agree with you that:

I wondered when I was watching it if there were one or more scenes missing from the romance plot. Maybe they filmed some but cut them for some reason?
And I wondered if the two scenes involving her picture were out of order. I’m sure they didn’t make a msitake in editing, but perhaps they were originally supposed to be the other way around and they switched them on purpose for some reason. On the other hand, maybe she wouldn’t have slept with Leo if her picture hadn’t already been snubbed by Matt Damon. It’s been a few weeks since I saw it, so I’m not remembering all the details.

  1. The other thing that bugged me about the movie was that it seemed like every character was putting on a Boston accent. Not everyone who lives here grew up here, and even those that did don’t all have the Boston accent. It was fun to listen to, anyway.
10

Departed is a remake of the HK movie Infernal Affairs (mostly the original, and I’m told, bits from 2 & 3 as well). In IA 1, the corresponding police captain is killed in an identical manner, and maybe the dynamics aren’t quite the same in HK, so it probably works in IA but not in Departed. I thought it was a decent effort, but it wasn’t very interesting because due to the liberal copying of concrete plot structure from IA, I could anticipate most of the events.

11

I’m hoping it’s okay to ressurect a nearly dead thread given that I just watched the movie. If not, please don’t put a bullet through my head (I’m a little jaded after watching the movie.)

I completely agree. I was left with a “WTF?” feeling. First because of the glaring holes you mentioned. Second because I wondered what Mark Wahlberg did to deserve an Oscar nomination. He wasn’t bad, he just wasn’t a key character.

I absolutely agree. I think Scorsese switched the scenes to make her seem more sympathetic. Without Damon dismissing the photo and hurting her feelings, she had no justifiable reason to screw DiCaprio.

I am convinced that there was another sub-plot that was cut from the final version that involved the police shrink. DiCaprio saying to Damon (before realizing that he was the Judas) that “The only other person I’ve been able to talk to is some police shrink.” was such a bizarre thing to say for his character to say that I thought, “Uh oh, Damon is going to realize that he’s been seeing his girlfriend. And then he’s going to discover the envelope that DiCaprio sent to her and think that she’s a plant and kill her.”

100% agree. You’d have thought that seeing his only ally in the police force splattered at his feet would have made him more paranoid. He should have tracked down Wahlberg and asked him what was up.

Absolutely agree. And where were the FBI when their star informant, Costello, was dying?

I assumed he was snitching on folks like the Chinese microprocessor gang.

And how hard would it have been for them to realize that Damon was in cahoots with Costello? Costello openly sponsored Damon for years, even showing up at his police graduation ceremony where Damon hopped into his car (yeah, right), and no one sniffed out that relationship? Plus, he had a far nicer apartment than a troopie should have been able to afford.

Other questions:

  1. What the hell was in the envelope that DiCaprio gave to the shrink?

  2. Did Wahlberg shoot Damon because he knew he was a rat or because he screwed up so badly that Sheen ended up dead?

  3. Why didn’t the dying Mafia guy tell the others that DiCaprio showed up at the wrong address? Was he a cop? If so, why did they need a 2nd mole after this guy so successfully infiltrated the group?

  4. Why was DiCaprio so freaked out by having to give his “real” name and SSN. Surely Sheen/Wahlberg would have created a fake identity for him.

12

I hated this movie. It drove me crazy that none of the gangsters could figure out that the mole in their outfit was the guy who graduated from the police academy and it drove me crazy that the cops couldn’t figure out who the mole was in the police department even though the mob picked Matt Damon up after graduating from the academy.

13

Well, I also just watched it last night, and I thought it was very good. Maybe not a classic, but very entertaining.

I see a lot of complaints about apparently missing scenes, but I appreciated that Scorsese didn’t explicitly spell out every detail. Personally, I think a lot of movies have way too much unnecessary exposition. This one benefits from showing the characters interacting, then letting the audience figure out the intermediate steps. I didn’t find any of it confusing.

As for the FBI informant angle, the guy he’s based on (Whitey Bulger) was also an FBI informant. The benefit to Whitey was apparently bringing down a rival gang. I wouldn’t expect the FBI to be watching him constantly if they want good information.

As for why Costigan was working with Sullivan, I think he suspected he was the mole. IIRC, the only cooperation between them was the text message “Sheffield” that Costigan sent to tell Sullivan where they were going. If no cops had shown up, Costigan would’ve known that Sullivan was the guy. Luckily for Sullivan, by that point he was disenchanted with Costello and sent the police.

I agree about the unrealism of Queenan’s death and the subsequent shootout. That was a bit too Hollywood.

14

I feel silly quoting a six-month-old OP, but to address its points:

  1. Continuity and other problems with the psychiatrist. I agree that whole storyline felt poorly-conceived and sloppily executed. If Jack Nicholson’s opening narrative had led me to mistake the film for a romantic drama, it might bother me more, but as a comparatively minor area of the plot, it doesn’t bother me any more than the imperfections that dog all films, even my favorites.

  2. Why does Leo follow Matt Damon? Leo’s whole storyline in the film is that he has been asked to give up very basic human needs, his identity and security. To do so, he must trust those he is working with. Over the course of the film, it becomes clear to him that the cops do not really seem to have a grasp of how big a tiger they have by the tail, but he really doesn’t have a choice but to trust them. That segment made complete sense to me in the context of the film, so I don’t get what the problem with it is.

3-4. Martin Sheen’s death and Costello’s status as an FBI informant. Costello’s gang kills Queenan because they probably don’t even know who he is or his rank. They probably feel the confidence to off a cop because Costello has proved to be untouchable for decades. Of course the reason that he’s untouchable is that he’s an FBI informant, which is one of the reasons why he and his gang are not immediately hauled in. Even if this is not realistic, it is a well-established staple of cop-n-gangster movies and TV shows, so if one can not cope with it, it is advisable to avoid such fare. Also, it is a statistical impossibility that screenwriter William Monahan, a native Bostonian, did not base Costello on James “Whitey” Bulger, a currently on-the-lam Boston Irish mobster who disappeared to avoid police capture at the same time that his brother Billy was president of the state senate. The fact that the two men’s positions have so far not resulted in either Whitey’s capture or the tarnishment of Billy’s reputation to the point that it prevented him from serving since as President of Boston University or sitting on the boards of many prominent organizations throughout the city is a reflection of realities in the political and legal climate of Boston that are infused brilliantly into the film. Early in his exile, it was revealed that Whitey had been an FBI informant, something that came as a very unpleasant surprise to his former colleagues in the Winter Hill gang.

The whole film is about the blurred nature of the lines between good and evil, law and crime. In that context, why is killing a high-ranking cop any different than killing a high ranking mobster?

  1. Finding DiCaprio. The OP says it seems that Costello only had five or six guys with him. But in one part of the film, Costello announces plans to execute a job with a different crew. It is clear then, that we see the five or six guys because those are the only people in the organization that DiCaprio’s character sees regularly. To show these other crews in scenes with just Costello and none of the other main players would have given the film an unnecessary air of omniscience and destroyed the establishment of the atmosphere of ignorance and doubt in which the characters (and by extension, the audience) are forced to make their decisions.

Doubt can be a difficult element to cope with, and I can see where someone like the OP, who expresses a wish for a longer film with more direct exposition sufficient to dispel doubt whether their interpretation of plot point is correct or not, might have difficulty with a work where doubt features prominently, and be pre-disposed to not liking it.

Myself, I loved the hell out of it.

15

I sure hate me some narrative doubt. :smiley: Yeah, no.

16

I finally saw this, this morning and I was underwhelmed by it. It was a good movie, but nothing great. The characters all seemed without anchor, whereas the characters in Goodfellas and the Godfather where much better developed and fit into their world with a family.

I was wondering if anyone else felt very little motivation or understand of what drove these characters. I thought Scorsese took a lot of shortcuts this time and ended up with a disjointed movie that just kind of missed a bit of being great or compelling.

Jim

17

First off, let me say that I enjoyed The Departed.

Secondly, let me also say that I agree with most criticism of this movie.

Let me explain.

No, that would take too long; let me summarize.

The Deprated, as we already know, is an Americanized remake of an allegedly excellent Hong Kong trilogy. Squeezing a translated trilogy with a different cultural background into a ~2.5 hour movie is tough. Character motivations and actions are way underdeveloped, causing what appears to be gaping plot holes and actions contradictory to what appears to be established character motivations. What we are left with then are good-to-excellent performances by the cast, and lots of puzzlement over what they are doing and why they are doing it.

So I kicked back with my popcorn and Coke, and watched Nicholson et.al. chew scenery, and left the questions/comments to the critics, pundits, and the SDMB Cafe Society.

18

I agree with you and was totally underwhelmed by the film. Critics seemed to be universally saying that it was Scorsese’s “comeback”, his best film since Goodfellas, et cetera. I thought it was weak, disjointed, and failed to make me care about any of the characters. Casting Jack Nicholson as a Southie Irish gangster was an utter miss as far as I’m concerned–he came off as just another rendition of “Jack”–and while Alec Baldwin was brilliantly hilarious in playing a variation on Blake from Glengarry Glen Ross, he totally pulled me out of the film every time. I’d rather watch Casino, The Aviator, or even The Gangs of New York again than this film. And while the Best Director and Best Picture Awards were long, long overdue, they should have been issued retroactively for Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, The Age of Innocence, or even Goodfellas rather than this film.

A big wet noodle of a film, and I agree with the o.p. that I can’t understand why people are so ga-ga over it. Scorsese has done vastly superior if underappreciated work.

Stranger

19

I’ve seen the trilogy. Couple of points:

  1. The Departed covers about 95% of the first one with the remaining 5% lifted in fragments from the remaining two. It isn’t really a compression of all three.

  2. The first film of the original trilogy is phenomenal. The second is okay. The third has some interesting moments but is otherwise a huge mess.

  3. The Departed suffers next to Infernal Affairs (in my opinion) because it is concrete where the original is more abstract. The original film is about balance, about yin-and-yang, about mirror images circling one another and getting lost in each other’s identities and worlds. It is constructed much more elegantly and cleanly, and while it suffers from some of the same plot holes as the remake, the emphasis is different, so you don’t mind as much. The remake dumps most of the philosophy and attempts to tell the same story in a grittier, more realistic fashion, which means those narrative problems are put into starker relief.

Example: The police captain is a more significant role in the original than in the remake. In the original, he’s played by Anthony Wong, who if you know your Hong Kong movies you recognize as a big deal actor. In the remake, he’s Martin Sheen, who is a name but not a huge star. And Sheen is pitted against Nicholson, who is a huge star. Already, the balance is off; Nicholson takes over the movie and Sheen fades into the background. The carefully managed thematic energy of the original film is discarded in favor of something (in my opinion) much less interesting.

I thought The Departed was okay, but it certainly wasn’t the best film of the year. But then, when has the top Oscar ever gone to the best film of the year? That, to me, is a rather pointless criticism. More significant, to me, is the apparent fact that Scorsese and his screenwriter somehow missed the point of the original, and decided to use it as a template for a much less interesting movie. That’s the big disappointment, in my view.

On the other hand, I will concede that a preference for narrative abstraction is a matter of personal taste, and I’ve heard from people who didn’t particularly care for the original while they liked the remake a lot. If you’re into movie stars being movie stars, The Departed is great. If you want a movie that makes you think, stick with the original. If you want airtight plotting, don’t bother with either. It’s really about personal preference.

20

Yep. It’s on HBO and my husband and I just finished watching it. It held our attention because of the performances and the directing. Pretty much every scene looked good. We’d occasionally look at each other and say “That doesn’t make sense”, but we had to keep watching.

My husband never sits in front of the TV for more than two hours unless he’s watching football. He loves Jack though, and was impressed that Leo finally looks like a grown-up.