Martin Scorsese’s film, The Departed- based upon a 2002
Hong Kong action flick, Internal Affairs, is his best film in over a
decade, and a vast improvement over his last two bloated films: Gangs
Of New York and The Aviator. That said, it is, in comparison to such
classics as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, and The King Of Comedy, second
rate Scorsese- or in the range of what Casino was compared to
Goodfellas, a good, solid, second tier work with flaws, except that, in
this comparison, The Departed is Casino to Casino’s Goodfellas. There
are several reasons for this. The first is one of the oldest reasons
movies tank- the unnecessary love story element. In this film it is a
bloated couch potato of an albatross from around whose neck The
Departed sags badly in the middle. The moment the female character made
contact with the second of the two male leads, I- and any astute
filmgoer, knew exactly what would happen between them and how the film
would play out, emotionally. The second is that the ending is bad, I
mean really bad- a complete deus ex machina, and a narratively
factitious one, at that; one which shows old Marty doesn’t trust his
viewers that much any longer, and is then compounded by one of the
worst closing shots in memory. The third is a recurring problem in
recent Scorsese films: Leonardo DiCaprio. Despite all the hoohah, the
man simply cannot act. Ok, to be fair, he can memorize lines, but he
has no subtlety, no grace, and the fact that Scorsese puts the jailbait
ready young blond into roles as tough guys is odd, to say the least,
guffaw-inducing, to the point of causing severe bodily injury, in the
extreme. One thing in the favor of DiCaprio in this film, however, is
an early scene of a hairless bodied, prepubescent looking, DiCaprio
stripped to his underwear while standing in a jailhouse line. The scene
is likely to have middle-aged homosexual men creaming in their pants
for years to come (I couldn’t resist the pun).
With those three caveats out of the way, however, let me state
again that The Departed is a good film- at times, a very good film, but
nowhere near a great film, and one that should not be thought over too
strenuously, lest logic do what it does to eat holes through the plot.
Said plot is rather simple, although some people maybe put off by it
for Scorsese’s nearly ADD-affected editing style, which while done very
well, is nonetheless so quick that often a four or five second key
scene, or bit of dialogue, is lost, and the narrative petrifies for
some who are not as quick with their senses. Some years ago, the head
of a local Irish crime syndicate in South Boston, Frank Costello (Jack
Nicholson- in the most convincing role of the film, and in his best
role in years), takes a boy named Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) under his
wing. Through the decades, Sullivan becomes invaluable to Costello, who
urges him to become a cop, and his mole on the inside of local law
enforcement. Another local boy, Billy Costigan (DiCaprio), becomes a
cop, as well. Both make it through the police academy and apply for the
Special Investigations Unit (SIU), headed by Captain Charlie Queenan
(Martin Sheen) and Sergeant Sean Dignam (Mark Wahlberg- who gives the
second best performance in the film; again outshining DiCaprio, as he
did in The Basketball Diaries). Alec Baldwin plays Captain George
Ellerby, in another hilarious Baldwinian scenery-chewing performance.
Sullivan is accepted, while Costigan is not, but offered a job
to go undercover to infiltrate Costello’s gang. He is given a phony
conviction, and serves time in jail, then is ordered to see a state
shrink named Dr. Madolyn Madden (Vera Farmiga), who is, naturally, the
girlfriend of Sullivan. Recall my above prime reason for the film’s
major failing. Soon, she and Costigan hit the sheets, and she feels-
you got it, guilt for betraying Sullivan. Costello, meanwhile, seems to
drop all of his usually good common sense, and swiftly accepts Costigan
into his gang, which includes a psychotic mass murderer named Mr.
French (Ray Winstone, in the third best role in the film). These sorts
of plot devices, based upon the Dumbest Possible Action principle, and
evidence of melodrama, work, for the most part, because the film is so
fast-paced and utterly unpretentious, even at two and a half hours in
length. While the screenplay, by William Monahan, could have been
better without these elements, Farmiga’s performance almost counteracts
the film’s inertial and speedy ride over this flaw. She simply does not
project enough smarts nor sex appeal to make one understand why both
men would be interested in her for she lacks any real chemistry or heat
with either actor; plus, she simply telegraphs her every emotion with
her eyes.
Anyway, after the usual cat and mouse game between Costello,
Sullivan, and Costigan, including some implausible actions on the parts
of all three characters- such as a computer chip sale to Chinese
gangsters, Sullivan eventually weasels his way into a position to have
Queenan followed, accusing him of being Costello’s mole. When he goes
to meet Costigan on a rooftop, Sullivan tips off Costello, who sends
his men to toss Queenan off the roof, as Costigan barely escapes.
However, the cops Sullivan had tailing Queenan shoot it out with
Costello’s men, including Costigan, who pretends to arrive late to the
‘job’ of offing Queenan. When Costello’s men recover from the battle,
one of them, before he croaks, tells Costigan he knows he was the rat
because he deliberately gave him the wrong address, but he showed up at
the right one. This is a good example of a nice twist in the script,
although stating it so baldly makes it lose some of its impact.
However, the fact that the death of Queenan is not enough to make the
cops close up Costello’s gang for good is utterly implausible.
Costigan then tries to smoke out the Costello mole, but fails.
With Queenan’s death, the SIU goes nuts, and Sullivan and Dignam have
it out, with Dignam resigning from the force. Sullivan then tries to
find out Queenan’s mole by calling from Queenan’s cell phone. He also
finds out that Costello was an FBI informant who stayed in power by
ratting out fellow criminals, and worries that Costello might one day
turn on him. Sullivan then sets a trap to get Costello killed, and it
works, although Sullivan has to do in Costello himself, after Costello
admits he was an FBI informant. With Costello dead, Costigan meets with
Sullivan, but soon distrusts him after noticing that Sullivan has an
envelope with information that Costello was collecting on his boys for
his police mole. With Costigan having left, Sullivan sees the envelope,
and realizes Costigan knows, so erases his police file, and the
evidence that he ever was a cop. Now, a) computer files are not that
easily erased, and b) Dignam still knows that Costigan was a cop, so
Sullivan’s actions are totally the Hollywood movie Dumbest Possible
Action sort. Naturally, this is relieved by the fact that Costigan does
something even dumber, which alleviates Sullivan’s stupidity.
And this is where the films starts to slide quickly downhill.
Costigan gives Madolyn an envelope with an audio CD of Sullivan talking
business with Costello, for, apparently Costello made Costigan his
will’s executor- which included taped conversations like this for the
FBI. Now, this is wildly implausible, for Costigan was never really
trusted by Costello, he must know that Sullivan is her boyfriend, and
cannot know where her loyalties lie, and Madolyn- was there ever any
doubt?, stupidly, plays the CD for Sullivan, rather than just passing
it on to the authorities. She does this, perhaps, because she is
pregnant, and the kid may be Costigan’s (who’d’a thunk?). Costigan then
blackmails Sullivan into meeting at the rooftop where Queenan was
killed, and tries to arrest him- notice the continuing Dumbest Possible
Action tropes?, rather than simply turning Sullivan in to the cops.
However, Sullivan was- yes, you know it, tailed by one of Costigan’s
old police academy buddies, who orders him to surrender. Costigan says
that Sullivan was the rat, and goes down an elevator. Another cop is
waiting on the ground floor, and kills Costigan with a shot through the
skull, then kills Costigan’s officer pal, explaining to Sullivan that
he, too, was a Costello mole. He frees Sullivan, who then promptly
kills him. Sullivan then lays the blame solely at the second mole’s
feet, and recommends Costigan for a Medal, as Madolyn disdains him,
even though she could have easily exposed Sullivan.
Now, despite all the Lowest Common Denominator and Dumbest
Possible Action tropes till this point, this would have been a powerful
and realistic way to end the film, with the bad guy winning, and would
have made all the prior predictable tropes serve merely as narrative
red herrings. But, the older yet not wiser Scorsese needs to preach, it
seems. So, some time later, Sullivan returns to his apartment with
groceries in hand, and Dignam is waiting for him. One can surmise that
Madolyn tipped of Dignam, but, as he is no longer a cop, and they seem
to have never met, it’s, again, implausible. Nonetheless, Dignam wastes
Sullivan, who seems resigned to his death, yet- given Sullivan’s recent
local fame, would not this immediately bring down a manhunt on Dignam?
The thinking being that the organized criminals tried to whack the
‘hero cop’? Anyway, as Dignam leaves the scene of the crime, the camera
pans from Sullivan’s corpse, out his apartment window, to a rat
crawling on the apartment’s balcony railing, in front of the gold dome
of the Massachusetts State House. No, not a subtle ending, and the fact
that Scorsese has to end the film so black and white, where he seemed
to be saving the best for last (the ending with the bad guy winning),
is doubly frustrating, from a viewer’s and writer’s perspective.
Compare that ending to Mean Streets’ truly realistic end, Taxi Driver’s
twisted twist ending, or Goodfella’s slyly comedic purgatorial end, and
this film’s end is almost criminally condescending, by comparison. In
fact, the last film that I can recall that so blatantly used symbolism
so heavyhandedly was the infamous and laughably bad 1995 Canadian
softcore lesbian porno film, When Night Is Falling, about a black
circus acrobat- the Negrobat, who seduces a white, French-Canadian
professor at a conservative Christian college. Its ending featured the
revival of a dead white dog that had been stored in an icebox. Trust
me, don’t ask for any further details.
Equally frustrating, in The Departed, is the excessive use of
profanity. No, I’m not a prude, and in the earlier classics that he
made, Scorsese’s characters spoke such profanities freely and
naturally. Not so in this film, where every scene between the cops is
about dickwaving and profanity. Between the criminal scum, this is a
bit more realistic, but, are we to believe that cops- men who carry
guns, routinely physically curse at and brutalize each other whenever
another cop does something stupid? Been there, seen that it does not
happen- it just doesn’t. This is plain silly, certainly not realistic,
and merely evidence of crudity substituting for real screenplay smarts.
As for anything ‘deeper,’ in a film like this one cannot really
dig into issues like cultural identity, or masculinity and violence,
because, while they are there, they are there at such a superficial
level (as opposed to, say, the same theme of violence in Taxi Driver or
Raging Bull, explored at a far deeper level). On a technical level, the
film does employ music well, and the film succeeds with its many quick
cuts, even if more longer paced scenes should have been interspersed to
let the actors truly act and cogitate on their lives, beyond the
overacting DiCaprio does on Fermiga’s couch. Cinematographer Michael
Ballhaus does his usual competent job, especially in the retro look of
some scenes, which open and close with irises.
The two disk DVD, by Warner Brothers, is naturally bloated.
There are not enough extras to need a second disk, and furthermore, for
a two disk set, they commit the ultimate crime: no film commentary by
Scorsese nor any of the leads. There are nine deleted scenes prefaced
by Scorsese’s reasons for omission, a profile called Scorsese On
Scorsese, a documentary on the criminal this film was based upon:
Boston crime kingpin, James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, a documentary on what
influenced Scorsese’s crime films, and the theatrical trailer. Solid
stuff, but for two disks, more- especially an audio commentary, should
be standard issue. But, were the movie better, the gripes re: the DVD
package would be minimal.
As it is, The Departed is good Hollywood fluff, yet, given that
it’s Scorsese, more is expected, although I have the sinking feeling
that, like Woody Allen, he will never produce another masterpiece. This
film follows a standard cops and crooks formula, which, in and of
itself, is not a bad thing- consider the 1997 crime masterpiece, L.A.
Confidential. The difference is that where that film took a genre
formula and twisted it from pulp melodrama into real drama, via the
writing and performances, as well as ending the film with a satisfying
twist that was unexpected in the small, even if expected in the large
(the good guys won), The Departed does the inverse, never rising above
melodrama (even if good), and ending the film with a bad twist, of the
worst deus ex machina sort. If you watch the film, don’t expect much of
an aesthetic not intellectual rush, only some mildly entertaining
moments, crafted really well. If you want the former, go watch some
earlier films from the Scorsese canon. Unfortunately, given his recent
output, that last line was also likely seen coming from a mile away.
--
The Dan Schneider Interviews: The Most Widely Read Interview Series in
Internet History
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Roger Ebert calls Dan Schneider, 'observant, smart, and makes every
effort to be fair,' and states,
'What is remarkable about these many words is that Schneider keeps an
open mind,
approaches each film afresh, and doesn't always repeat the same
judgments.
An ideal critic tries to start over again with every review.'
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www.Cosmoetica.com
Cosmoetica: The Best In Poetica
www.Cosmoetica.com/Cinemension.htm
Cinemension: Film's Extra Dimension
--
The Dan Schneider Interviews: The Most Widely Read Interview Series in
Internet History
--
Roger Ebert calls Dan Schneider, 'observant, smart, and makes every
effort to be fair,' and states,
'What is remarkable about these many words is that Schneider keeps an
open mind,
approaches each film afresh, and doesn't always repeat the same
judgments.
An ideal critic tries to start over again with every review.'
--
Member of the Internet Film Critic Society (IFCS)
Criterion Collection and Classic DVD Examiner
www.examiner.com/x-19688-Criterion-Collection-and-Classic-DVD-Examiner
--
www.Cosmoetica.com
Cosmoetica: The Best In Poetica
www.Cosmoetica.com/Cinemension.htm
Cinemension: Film's Extra Dimension