I stayed back and watched a chopped-up version of "The Departed" on TV Links today. Not a bad film, though nowhere near the intensity of what is arguably Scorsese's chef d'oeuvre, "Goodfellas." Great dialogue, though; the scriptwriters had the whole Baahhston repartee down pat. Matt Damon, being from Southie, was a natural, but ol' Jack Nicholson could've worked on his accent.
Scorsese's not exactly known for subtlety; like Spielberg, he's got an overactive camera, which I actually enjoy. Unlike Spielberg, however, Scorsese sometimes prefers choppy editing over smooth editing. I wasn't sure how much I liked the way "The Departed" felt in some stretches, especially those moments when characters were laying into each other, David Mamet-style, inside a car.
Because the version I saw was chopped up (the movie had been divided into sections; some sections didn't play all the way through), I'm not sure I quite understood Mark Wahlberg's character's role in the story-- especially given what his character does at the very end. Was he a mole, too, or just a vengeful cop seeking justice for the murder of his boss and the infiltration of his police department? I read the Wikipedia summary of the movie after watching the whole thing; it appears I missed an entire fight between Wahlberg's character and Matt Damon's. I came away from Wikipedia none the wiser about Wahlberg.
In all, I'd have to say "The Departed" was very entertaining-- a gangster version of a Shakespearean tragedy. It wasn't a masterpiece, but it was slick. Now I need to go see the Hong Kong film from which the story was ripped off: "Infernal Affairs."
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Tuesday, July 03, 2007
"The Departed": a quick review
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2 comments:
He wasn't a mole.
We enjoyed "The Departed" when we saw it (way back when), but my wife says that it was nothing compared to the HK original. I don't think the film ("The Departed," that is) did that well in Korea, and the reason for that is probably that most everyone here is familiar with the original.
I haven't seen the original yet. Gotta get around to that someday.
(I remember Wahlberg's character making perfect sense to me at the time, by the way, so you might have missed more than just a fight in the chopped up version. It's been a few months since I've seen it, though, so my memory is a bit fuzzy.)
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