THE DEPARTED (2006)
Martin Scorsese adapts here a popular cops-and-crooks Hong Kong actioner (Infernal Affairs), with a cast including Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jack Nicholson. Scorsese is, of course, back in the territory that made his name, the territory of baroque violence, and blood soaked betrayals and redemptions.
So it’s safe to ask here: what more could we ask for?
But the answer to that question is a let-down. A little more Scorsese we would ask for, a little more tension too, a little more of the signature stylistics that we’ve come to expect.
While it is a good film, though saddled by cliché dialogue and some broad character strokes, it isn’t up to snuff for Scorsese in either his bloody or his reflective mood.
He couldn’t resist here an opening set piece (setting place, tone, and time) draped in Gimme Shelter, by the Rolling Stones (Scorsese has to be the only director with a theme song). This is, to my mind, an unfortunate way to open the film, for two reasons. One, it succinctly announces a Scorsese film; this is misleading, however, since The Departed is the film that looks the least like Scorsese of any he’s done in years (there was no mistaking the man behind the camera in The Aviator). Second, while it’s announcing who’s here, it’s also announcing in what way he’s here: it sets right away that he’s here lazily, half-awake. At the beginning, in this scene, one notices that this film lacks the inventiveness that marks his other works. The song is a fine example of that, appearing to good and memorable use in Goodfellas and again later in Casino. Here, it is there in the same way a title card might be: it is giving information, in a mechanical and uninspired fashion.
Now, there’s little else (apart from the appalling dialogue) to complain about here. None of the actors hits a sour note, and many often hit very fine pitches and tones. DiCaprio stands out, again, as does Damon, who could stand to shake off the Bourne Identity and spend more time with these kinds of parts. Nicholson strikes a solid balance between lunatic and self-parody; at this point in time, we want him to ham it up: that’s half the fun, and he obliges us.
Still, though, the overall tone is slack. There is an attempt–at times a deft one–to balance high comedy and high madness, but most often, the film feels unfocussed. When Damon and DiCaprio finally begin heading for their collision, the film gets meaner and leaner. This might have been a better film if we’d stayed more closely to that part of the narrative, and steered a bit away from overdeveloping (the film runs 2 ½ hours) the policier and gangster environments. Less time could have been spent in these places, to stronger impact.
When the violence happens, it is surprisingly run-of-the-mill. People have been cribbing Scorsese’s style for so long that maybe it’s unfair to chastise him for the familiarity of these scenes; after all, it’s only his fault he’s being imitated insofar as he’s worth imitating. But we do expect more of him than of his imitators and this time he doesn’t put in the effort.
For a director who is seemingly so very attentive and thorough, it appears that he phoned this one in.
HDFEST RATING:
Overall: B
Acting: A
Originality: C
Enjoyability: B+
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