Review: The Departed
Leonardo
DiCaprio and Matt Damon play two Irish-American Boston boys who grow up to be
cops. However, whilst Damon was mentored from an early age by mobster Frank
Costello (Jack Nicholson) to become his inside man, DiCaprio gets picked by
Capt. Queenan (Martin Sheen) and verbally abusive Sgt. Dignam (Mark Wahlberg)
to be their own inside man into Costello’s gang. Both DiCaprio and Damon are
looking for moles inside the two organisations, i.e. each other. Vera Farmiga
plays a police shrink who becomes romantically involved with Damon, whilst also
professionally seeing DiCaprio. Alec Baldwin plays Damon’s immediate superior
on the force, who is oblivious to Damon’s true allegiances and (get this) puts
Damon in charge of investigating…himself, basically. Ray Winstone plays
Costello’s rough and tough right-hand man, whilst Anthony Anderson is a cop who
graduated at the same time as DiCaprio.
Entertaining,
but not one of the better films from director Martin Scorsese (“Taxi Driver”,
“Raging Bull”, “Goodfellas”, “Hugo”), this 2006 cops vs.
crooks flick is never dull but suffers from contrivances, and an unsatisfactory
romantic element. Scripted by William Monahan (“Kingdom of Heaven”, “Body
of Lies”, “Edge of Darkness”), the film is actually a remake of “Infernal
Affairs”, and is thus completely unnecessary, much like Scorsese’s remake
of “Cape Fear”, though this film is at least better than that one.
After
a few fascinating and ambitious (if unwieldy) epic-scale dramatic pictures (“The
Aviator” and “Gangs of New York”), Scorsese returns to potentially
safer gangster territory for this profane cops-and-crims picture. Despite a
hell of an ensemble cast and interesting Boston flavour, the film never quite
makes it to the big leagues, and is frankly overrated. This is mostly because
the HK crime flick “Infernal Affairs” is pretty standard issue material
beneath this great man’s talents. It could also have lost the extremely
contrived subplot involving Farmiga’s character, that isn’t nearly as
interesting as the rest of the film. I’ve seen the film twice now, and the
Farmiga character is indeed the film’s biggest problem. I have no idea what the
two composite characters from the original that this character is based on are
like, but Scorsese should’ve seen that the character just doesn’t work here.
It’s a contrivance and she is portrayed as unrealistically unprofessional. On
my second viewing, the notion that Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio’s
characters being unaware of one another seemed less of a contrivance, but not quite
enough for me to give him a pass on it. Scorsese and Monahan try to cover over
some of the more unlikely things in the film like that, but it can’t be denied
that the Farmiga character is a big gaping wound left wide open. And filled
with disgusting puss and blood. There’s just no reason beyond contrivance, for
there to be a love triangle in this story. It isn’t necessary and it isn’t
welcome. The relationship between Farmiga and DiCaprio just doesn’t convince.
So
the film isn’t great. It’s no “Goodfellas”. It does, however have the
ingredients for a potentially great film, and there’s still lots of things to
enjoy here. In fact, I may have enjoyed it more the second time around. The
biggest reason to see the film if you haven’t already is quite simply Jack.
This isn’t the subtle Jack Nicholson of “About Schmidt”, not in the
slightest. This is Jack being Jack in a Martin Scorsese cops and crooks film,
and he’s quite simply bloody marvellous. His opening narration is terrific, and
so long as you can tolerate and appreciate Jack being Jack, then you’ll love
him here. Some might be surprised to see Nicholson in this role, but De Niro is
too identified as Italian, and Robert Duvall wouldn’t be brutal or menacing
enough. So Nicholson was the right choice. There’s few things more dicey than a
negotiation involving opponents with machine guns, and speaking languages that
require a translator. You need to watch and
listen, ‘coz you’re getting the words on a delay. Add Jack Nicholson to the
mix, as a man with little sense of tact and a whole lotta unpredictability, and
boy is it a recipe for tension and potential violence. So in that sense, Jack
is pitch-perfect casting. Scorsese deals with Catholicism in a lot of his
films, so it’s interesting that he uses the Jack Nicholson character here to
espouse some very negative views about Catholic priests (It’s hard to blame
him, to be honest. I’m sure a lot of Catholics are dissatisfied with their
Church on the child sex abuse issue).
I
didn’t find Leonardo DiCaprio terribly convincing here on first viewing, he
seemed a little too baby-faced. But I’ve softened somewhat on second viewing.
He’s OK, I guess, but much better in the same year’s “Blood Diamond”.
Much more effective is a perfectly cast Matt Damon, who plays the polar
opposite of Leonardo DiCaprio here. It’s interesting to see these two guys from
a psychological perspective, one a cop pretending to be a crook, the other a
cop who really is a crook. But
there’s no doubt that Damon is much more fun to watch. Both are attempting to
keep up facades, but Damon’s the more fascinating one here because he’s
juggling several balls in the air, trying to keep everything straight. He’s a
hot-shot, charismatic cop on the take, and feeling the pressure from both
sides. It’s interesting that Scorsese has given both DiCaprio and Damon father
figures here, with Martin Sheen providing a much more stable and moral paternal
figure for DiCaprio than Nicholson does for Damon, who has been under
Nicholson’s wing for a very long time. There’s also fine support from Ray
Winstone and Alec Baldwin here, among others. Winstone may not convince as a
Bostonite, but he does convince as a man with whom not to fuck. He’s one
helluva scary man. Baldwin is rock-solid as one of the cops, and his accent is
a bit more believable than whatever he was trying for in “Outside
Providence”. I thought Mark Wahlberg was a strange choice to be the only
one in this film to receive an Oscar nomination. However, I can’t deny that
this is one of his best and funniest performances ever. He makes for a very
funny prick, and watching him and Damon go toe-to-toe with their duelling
Boston-accented tough guy schtick, is one of the film’s highlights for sure.
One
of the biggest talking points about the film is its ending. Ridiculous,
audacious, kind of brilliant- it’s really something. It’s a shame that plot
contrivances and the need for a female love interest get in the way here.
Although I wish Scorsese wouldn’t do remakes, this is a solid and entertaining
film that could’ve been even more if the screenplay were pared down a bit and
smartened up. This film could’ve and should’ve been excellent (it’s a pretty
weak Best Picture Oscar winner), that it still manages to be quite good is
somewhat mindboggling, really.
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