The Departed 2006
This has gone back into wide release with awards season in full swing. So of course it is overhyped and I was doomed to be disappointed. I thought it was interesting, but pretty much a straightforward movie. There were a few curves, but I thought everything just went from Point A to B to C, etc. I don’t really know what motivated anyone in the movie and some of the things they did didn’t seem to make much sense. Unfortunately I have to blame the director for that, because I would guess things were supposed to hold together better.
I thought everything was over the top. Mark Wahlberg was just nuts. Why would anyone “have to put up with him” as Martin Sheen says? Cops getting in fistfights with each other all the time? To me they substituted violence and action for a really good storyline or characters. I liked Inside Man better which kept to a smart storyline and kept violence to a minimum. No thinking was really needed in this movie. It was very similar, I thought, to L.A. Confidential, only without the intrigue. The other tack they could have taken would have been just a bleak, realistic story of self-destruction like Goodfellas or Scarface, but we didn’t see that either. The characters lacked depth, staying pretty much as they were set up initially. Leonardo was so obviously a cop the whole time. He drinks cranberry juice and “failed out” of the police academy? And he doesn’t kill anybody. Wouldn’t Nicholson have put a gun in his hand and said shoot this guy and prove to me you aren’t a cop?
Still, the movie is probably worth watching if you like really violent cops and robbers movies. I thought this was a good movie, but fell far short of being a great one. I’ll give it a B.
Owned on: Digital