I finally got around to watching the newest Scorcese film, The Departed.
This is weeks after the other Orble film freaks, Cinematrix and Movies and Life, reviewed it.
Based on the infamous Hong Kong movie, Infernal Affairs, Scorcese replaced the Triads with the Irish gangs of South Boston, and injected his own stylish flair and pace to make it a newly born film, riding in off the ocean naked on a half shell.
What a movie!
One hundred fifty minutes of tension, thrill and shock.
It’d be pretty hard to mess it up, with the script from Hong Kong and a cast that’s so star struck with testosterone it reeks of BO and locker rooms: Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg, as well as Matt Damon and Leonardo Di Caprio as the two main characters.
I was naturally skeptical of watching Damon and Di Caprio take on crucial roles despite Scorcese’s latest fixation on Di Caprio Gangs of New York and The Aviator, I felt they were both too clean to be gangsters.
But in the context of South Boston, where Irish gangs roam the streets like dogs sniffing for blood, this phenomenal cast of white men do a number, then come back for seconds.
“If your father saw you sitting here with me, he’d probably kick my ass. And he could probably do it, too. That’s what kind of man he was.”
Nicholson’s character, Costello, says this to Di Caprio, who is an undercover cop trying to crack the Costello gang. This is where Scorcese brings his American gang sensibility to the picture he shows how organized crime crawls up from the grass out of the dirt. Gangsters become gangsters because they grow up in an area and passed over by the rest of society. What other option do they have, other than self-assembling into cohesive units of violence and corruption?
Costello seems to understand that he has nothing else to do, when one of his boys suggests that Costello leave the mob.
“I don’t need money. I don’t need pussy, either, to tell you the truth, but I like it, anyway.”
Reforging the Hong Kong script into a Boston gang movie reveals an indestructible truth about human nature. as long as there are social classes and inequality, there will be criminals to fill that void. And then the police will chase them, but will prove themselves to be as barbaric.
The film lets you down on several occasions, most notably the awkward, thrown together romance subplot, which feels injected so that the cast wouldn’t be 100% male. But it’s out of the way and easy to forget, especially when the guns start firing.
The Departed isn’t going to change your life, and it’s not a miracle of original filmmaking. This isn’t ahead of its time, like A Bout de Souffle, and it’s not cute and charming like Amelie Poulain. People want to compare it to Goodfellas, or Raging Bull, but what’s the point? This is a fucking good film, with a lot of fucking swearing and gunshots to the head. It was so entertaining that I believe I’ll watch it again this week.
I say: Hell, yeah.
See it for: There are just too many good parts, and too many quotable quotes, especially from Nicholson, who comes of great as a villain.
Scorcese is the master of mixing music with visuals, and he doesn’t let us down, using old 60s rock songs, along with punked-up Irish tunes, to give us that dirty, gritty feel.
To watch more movies like The Departed (2006) hurawatch
Also watch: