I agree about Little Miss Sunshine. Ordered it the other night. What a good little movie that was.
It’s not even as good as the Hong Kong movie it’s based on.
(Yes, this is subjective. But in my opinion, Infernal Affairs is a much more interesting movie than The Departed. I guess I’m a sucker for movies that bring the theme front and center while not sacrificing other elements. Departed backgrounded the theme in favor of more plot.)
Which is not unusual for him, though happily he’s frequently the best thing in his movies.
I haven’t seen it, so I can’t compare. But I could see a lot of things that could have made it a more interesting movie, not the least of which was letting Damon’s character live in perpetual fear of discovery instead of killing him off. Yes, it is catharsis. It’s also boring and predictable. (As soon as Wahlberg disappeared, I knew he had to pop up to get vengence in the end.)
Which is peculiar, 'cause Scorsese has never really cared about plot as much as theme and character. Indeed, I can’t think of another Scorsese movie, except perhaps The Gangs of New York which could remotely be described as strongly plotted. This thing, though, was a box of puzzle pieces.
Well, yeah. Baldwin’s a creep, but he’s a masterful creep. He’s the kind of guy you send down from downtown to tell the underproducing salesmen that “Coffee is for closers. PUT DOWN THAT COFFEE!” and “You drove a Hyundai to get here tonight and I drove an eighty-thousand dollar BMW, that’s my name.” He sticks out here like a sore thumb, though, even though his interplay with Wahlberg was priceless.
Stranger
My biggest problem with this movie is that Wahlberg never dealt with DiCaprio after Martin Sheen was killed. There were only two people that knew DiCaprio was a mole, one of them was killed, so you’d think that the other one would have tried to somehow get in contact with the mole. Instead it looked like Wahlberg just aborted the whole undercover operation and put DiCaprio, a fellow officer, at serious risk.
At first I thought that Martin Sheen was acting too undedicated for an officer of his rank. He redeemed himself by dying trying to get DiCaprio out of the mob. Wahlberg remained undedicated to his civic duty. Even though he killed Damon, I saw it as redemption for the murder of a friend rather than as serving justice. It just seems flawed that Wahlberg’s character would be so high ranked in the department and also so trusted by Sheen’s character given his lack of dedication to his work. It makes highest ranks of the Boston Police look like the Mickey Mouse club.
Equipoise: Personal insults, however thinly veiled, are not permitted in this forum. You know better.
I saw and enjoyed the film overall, but I had some of the same objections to it raised in this thread. I also felt that the number of head-splattering assassinations caused it to teeter uncomfortably close to unintentional comedy at one point. In the movie review archive of my mind (sorry, no link) I assigned it 3 out of 5 stars.
Definitely not Scorsese’s best work—but I suppose he may deserve to win the Oscar anyway, in the same way someone deserves a criminal conviction on flimsy evidence because dammit, if they aren’t guilty of this one, they’re guilty of something.
What’s the significance of the title of the movie? Any thoughts?
Another issue I had with the movie was that it had no context. Goodfellas etc. were at least based on fact. The Departed gave that impression but it was. of course, pure fiction. There was no real basis in the Irish gangs of Boston or New York (Nicholson’s lack of a Boston accent didn’t help any) so I could never take the movie of the characters seriously.
Nicholson is loosely based on this guy
During the film, deceased people are often referred to as “The Departed.”
With all the offing of people at point-blank range with no remorse I found it hard to swallow that Damon’s character didn’t off the psychiatrist gal when she knew what had gone down. I’m also suprised she didn’t fear for her life and try to get out of the apartment. She unplugged the headphones so Damon could hear the CD then she locked herself in the bedroom???
I almost assumed she was the one who got the info back to Whalberg.
It was an okay to good movie for the type of movie it was but it was nothing I hadn’t seen before. The internal affair cat and mouse game with undercover informants out ratting eachother who’s good who’s bad theme is pretty well worn in Hollywood. It’s popular and makes for a good movie but I don’t know how it makes it an Oscar contender.
For a similar type movie I liked Snatch much, much better. I don’t think that one got nominated for anything.