Mini Movie Review - The Departed

This is a great frickin' movie!

Because of my high anticipation of this film, of course I went out to watch it on opening night. Went to the 10:15pm show and was kind of disappointed to see the theater only about 1/3 full. But despite that, the overall box office take over the weekend of $27 million was quite impressive and director Martin Scorsese's highest opening by far. Hopefully, word of mouth will push this film into the $100 million range and it'll win some awards. It's that good.

Like I said in my initial post about this film, it's a remake of a classic Hong Kong crime flick called Infernal Affairs. The basic plot is that the gangsters have planted a mole in the police force and the police have planted a mole in the mob's gang. Each mole tries to help out their respective bosses while trying not to get discovered.

With a cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, and Alec Baldwin, it's hard to go wrong as they are all skilled veterans. Throw in the polished direction of Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas, Raging Bull) and you've got some awesome talent. All the actors performed excellently with Wahlberg and DiCaprio I think delivering the strongest performances. DiCaprio was impressive as the undercover cop forced into the mob world and he really grew on me as an actor. He didn't do as good a job as Tony Leung in the original, but he was still great. Wahlberg got all of the great lines in the film and you could tell he loved delivering them. His character was essentially added to the film cuz it wasn't in the original and he was a great addition.


But the star of the film, despite all the talent listed above was screenwriter William Monohan. Yeah, the film's a remake so the basic outline was already done for him but the dialogue he delivered was quite impressive. There were a lot of touches that made the film Boston-centric and I really liked the way he combined the 2 female characters of the original film into 1. It really cleaned things up. I also liked the way he kept some scenes from the original like the "How to tell someone's a cop" scene, the "arm cast" scene, and "handwriting on the envelope" plot device. If he had just included a scene of Damon and DiCaprio listening to stereo equipment together, it would've been perfection.

I'm writing all of this from the perspective of someone who's seen the original film and I can only imagine that the film would be even more affecting for someone who's seeing it with fresh eyes. For me, I kind of knew what was going to happen as each scene unfolded but for a first timer, they have the pleasure of experiencing the surprises the script delivers and it will make the film that much more exciting.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this film and very highly recommend it!