Zombie Pirate Ninja Monkey

Review of Scorcese's The Departed

I went to see Scorcese's new film, The Departed, last night.  This will be short, partly to avoid anything spoiler-ish, and partly because I can't be bothered.

Basically, all those people saying that it rivals Goodfellas are a bit mad or something.  It's not.

The individual performances from Jack Nicholson (so long as you enjoyed his portrayal as the Joker), Matt Damon and - particularly - Leonardo di Caprio are excellent, to different degrees.  In the latter case, quite astonishingly so from an actor who has been largely disappointing for years: his portrayal of the traditional under-cover cop is not quite up there with Johnny Depp's Donnie Brasco, but it's very good.  Nicholson's range is hardly that of Pacino, and he lacks the subtlety of Brando, but he camps it up well enough, and the times that he is on-screen are fun.

But William Monahan's screenplay - based on the Hong Kong movie Infernal Affairs - is lazy, cliched, same-old-same-old stuff.  Yet again we have a film that is too long because it has about four endings, piled one after another.  Everyone you expect to die, dies (and that's a lot of people).  The few that you expect to live, live.  There are no surprises, except for one cat-scare moment that is only a surprise because there is no clue, ever, that the extremely minor character involved is what he turns out to be.  That is lazy writing: real deus ex machine stuff.

The actors work very well with what they have, but they don't have a lot.  There is no depth except that which they manage to read in despite their lines.  Excellent casting has managed to obscure what are very uninspired, workaday gangster-flick characters.

And the scenes meant to provide snippets of character background are jumpy, snippy, unsatisfying - goodness knows how in a two-and-a-half hour film - and seem dropped in at the last minute.  I think we are supposed to see the characters of Nicholson and Sheen as dualist forces, one of goodness and the other Manichean, fallen-and-worldly.  These are portrayed as father-figures to Damon and di Caprio respectively, but in such broad-brushstroked and unsubtle ways that I felt a little like saying "ok, I get it already, stop quoting Freud!" at a couple of points.  No, really: Damon is made to quote and reference Freud on numerous occasions, while di Caprio discusses, with Nicholson, killing him and taking his place, shortly after a discussion where Sheen literally pointedly refers to his own son.  Subtle.

Anyway, I could go on.  It's kinda fun, if unsatisfying.  Because it is Scorcese, it gets cut all sorts of slack, and the actors are good.  But it's not great, just above-average Friday-night cinema fare.  It is being routinely over-praised due to Scorcese's reputation.  Gangster movies are hard to really mess up, after all.