The Departed

(Movie Review)

This movie just came out on video in Japan last week.

Like most people, I rented it mainly just because of the impressive star power of the cast. (Which, in our celebrity obsessed culture, is probably just as good a reason to watch a movie as any). And it is quite an impressive cast: Leonardo Dicaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, and directed by Martin Scorsese....Now is that a cast or what? And I know that usually in movies with too many big names somebody ends up being under-utilized, but I thought all the main actors in this movie were given at least a couple great scenes to chew the screen up.

Some researching on the internet reveals that this movie is an American remake of the Hong Kong flick "Infernal Affairs". (I've not seen "Infernal Affairs", but it is somewhat popular over here in Japan, so I've seen the previews at least. It always looked kind of interesting.)

"The Departed" is set in Boston and revolves around the Irish-American culture and the Irish mafia. It doesn't come close to the level of pyscho-analysis that "The Godfather" did for the Italian mafia, but there are various throw away lines referencing the Irish-American experience: "Twenty years after an Irishman could't get a job, we had the presidency. May he rest in peace."

The plot gets a little complicated but basically Jack Nicholson is a Irish Mafia boss. Leonardo DiCaprio is an undercover cop infiltrating the mafia. Matt Damon is an undercover mafia who has infiltrated the police department. As the movie progresses various betrayals and changes of allegiance follow.

I don't want to give away too much to anyone who hasn't seen this movie, but at various points I thought it should have been obvious who the respective moles were. And it seemed like everyone was getting pretty sloppy and getting away with it. But that's Hollywood for you I guess.

Also (and again, I hope I'm not giving too much away here. Spoiler alert) the climax of the movie revolves around a taped conversation. You know, it turns out that something one of the characters said was being tape recorded and he didn't know it, and he said a lot of self-implicating things. Like we've seen a million other times in a million other movies and TV shows.

I suppose this is the most obvious way to end a story like this (which is why it's been used so many times before), but perhaps because it is the most obvious it is also the laziest. For my two cents I would liked to have seen a more interesting ending.

But the movie definitely held my attention for the time I was watching it.

Link of the Day
I'm a few days late in linking to this, but Mr. Guam has a post on the anniversery of the Loving Case and inter-racial marriage in America, which includes a link to James Dobson's thoughts the subject here.

As Mr. Guam states: "Most, if not all sites, come down on the side of allowing it. But they seem to preface their opinions by noting how hard interracial marriages can be. James Dobson states explicitly that while he has nothing against interracial couples, he wants to make sure people know how difficult an union like that will be. Not to sound to high and mighty... but to me that sounds like a pathetic last gasp. If interracial marriages are hard that just means the Church has more work to do to reach out to those couples. People like Dobson should point that out before they focus on the difficulty."

The Departed: Movie Review (Scripted)