The Departed
It’s a very good movie; it’s not a great movie. Conventional wisdom is that Scorsese got the Oscar for The Departed that he’d actually earned for GoodFellas (or Raging Bull); I can accept that, and I think it’s the best choice of that year’s nominees (United 93 knocked me out, but for various reasons, all obvious, the nomination probably served as its award).
But the acting puts it over, no question. Without Damon and DiCaprio, it’s much more obviously Marty On Auto-Pilot.
I love both of them in this. It’s just pleasurable to watch them work. DiCaprio can weird me out sometimes because he often presents as so youthful still, but I bought him here completely; I think he’s maybe through the woods with the looking-twenty-two thing, and he made Costigan relatable and three-dimensional, different from the clichéd sourness you might expect. The reaction work when Sheen goes off the building is first-rate — instead of pulling a series of faces from My Mentor Is Dead For Dummies, he actually plays the moment, thoughtfully.
I can seldom say enough good things about Damon, just generally; specifically to The Departed, it’s his willingness to play a weaselly dickhead 100 percent so that the guy is not then 100 percent weaselly dickhead. In the world, guys like that do get by somehow; they do have a charm to them, a mojo. Damon gets at the depth and lets Sullivan’s self-loathing and his self-regard play equally. That ability to do both Ripley and Bourne, in a single character if necessary, is impressive; it’s surprising to me that he didn’t get a nomination for an Oscar or a Globe, but part of his attraction as an actor is that he doesn’t need to show you what he’s doing all the time, which I guess could explain it.
I should also admit right now that a Boston accent gives me the tingles. Damon is a fox anyway, but when he’s in full “fahhhhhk you cawk-knawkeh” mode…man. That is hot.…I know, but I can only be what I am. Anyway: when it’s Damon and Mark Wahlberg doing it? Aw yeah. I have a higher tolerance than most for Wahlberg’s…let’s call it “understated,” his acting style, although it can backfire on him (see: The Happening, although it’s hardly his fault there; everyone in that movie looked baffled, not just Marky). It’s not because I think Wahlberg’s handsome, either; I do sometimes, but when I do, it’s…usually because of the accent.
But he can do some things well; he just has to get cast to do those things and not as, say, a science teacher. He’s excellent in The Departed. A lot of people reflexively cracked on that Oscar nom, and while I think it probably had more to do with the role fitting the size of a Supporting Actor turn better than Damon’s and DiCaprio’s fit Lead Actor (plus DiCaprio already had one for Blood Diamond), I still don’t have an issue with it now that I’ve seen the performance. The character is great, diamond-grade abrasive, never softens even a little, so the payoff with him at the end zings as a result.
The end is a problem, though. That last shot is so fucking corny, my jaw actually dropped. Bookending the film with the shot of Faneuil Hall (…I think) is weak enough, because we’ve seen it done dozens of times, but then putting an actual rat on the balcony railing? The Departed is very good, but it does have its problems: it’s too long; Nicholson is doing Nicholson, which is not something I have ever enjoyed, and on top of that the character is a “nobody talks like that” grab bag of guy-in-charge eccentricities versus actual traits; and Scorsese is recycling a lot of his signature shit. Bathing characters in red light, callbacking music cues from GoodFellas (trademark ones, too — you just really can’t use that Stones break again, ever), ceiling-cam set-ups…both the directing and the editing won Academy Awards, but neither felt fresh.
I still liked the movie a great deal, it kept me entertained throughout, and I would have given it an unqualified A-minus. The retread shot of Damon’s head leaking onto the floor (see: Pesci’s doing the same post-whack thing in GF), panning up to the view from the balcony so clumsily pointed out to us in the beginning, and then the rat — that one sequence dropped it to a B/B-plus.
I dig Scorsese, but I don’t think he walks on water, and when he loses me, he does it because he gets too wrapped up in the visual and forgets the written through-line, or falls in love with how something looks and forgets to marry it to how it tells. A movie is a story, and a movie that is just a series of pictures is not worthless, it’s not not a story, but you have to set out to do that; you can’t take a sidebar from the script for five or ten minutes at a time and expect it to work on its own. It can; it doesn’t always, though, and you have to focus. I had the same problem with Raging Bull: it’s too long and slow, it’s too into its own shot-making, and it plays as though Scorsese compensated for obsessing over slo-mo set-ups of arcing blood droplets by letting De Niro carry the rest of it however he saw fit, which resulted in what I think is a turgid, self-important portrayal that needed more active direction to keep La Motta interesting.
I have had numerous arguments about that movie, I realize it’s just me out here on the “it’s overrated and so is De Niro’s performance” limb, and I don’t expect to change your mind although you can ream me in the comments if you must. I’m also that one person sticking up for The Age of Innocence, so: grain of salt. I don’t bring it up for the sole purpose of bagging on it — it’s not terrible; I just think it’s overpraised — but to illustrate what I see as keeping The Departed from firing on all cylinders. It’s exactly the same problem, tricksy filmmaking that leaves the actors unsupervised, but in the case of The Departed, the actors bear the load well enough that you almost don’t notice it’s happening despite a half-dozen too-habitual choices. In Raging Bull, in my opinion, it’s not pulled off.
Scorsese is a great director; he deserved the hardware for lifetime achievement; I can live with it. But he has done better work than this, and should have done it here but didn’t.
Tags: Joe Pesci Leonardo DiCaprio Mark Wahlberg Martin Scorsese Matt Damon movies Robert De Niro The Crappening The Oscars
I loved it until the rat. I LOVED Mark Wahlberg’s final scene (I quit calling him Marky Mark after I saw him on Inside the Actor’s Studio and realized he’s a long way from the pants-dropping, Good Vibrations-“rapping” caricature I remember from sixth grade) and I loved how he never lost his edge. I loved rooting for Matt Damon to eat it when I pretty much always want to marry him in movies (and I know a few people who have interviewed him and claim he’s humble, smart, and down-to-earth). I’ve thought well of DiCaprio as an actor since Gilbert Grape (minus Titanic; I loathe that movie) and he didn’t disappoint me here at all. But the rat? Come ON. The Simpsons episode that parodied it has Ralph Wiggum announcing, “The rat stands for obviousness,” and I fell over laughing at that because: preach it, Ralphie.
I’m curious about what you & others thought of Vera Farmiga? I was meh on her throughout, except when she learns who Damon is and stalks away from him when he asks what will happen to the baby she’s carrying? Ice cold. Other than that, meh.
Totally there with the Boston accents. Delicious.
I’m with you on RAGING BULL; “not terrible, just overpraised” is exactly where it fits in for me.
As to THE DEPARTED, I don’t think of it as a masterpiece, but I read a description of it (in a discussion forum) as “a helluva good time at the movies,” and that feels right to me. And yes, the acting is marvelous (all the more so for not being all “look at me!” about it). Di Caprio, Wahlberg, Baldwin, and especially Damon — just right.
I once told a friend I’d pay to watch Matt Damon read the dictionary, if he did it with the Boston accent. I had a massive high-school-girl crush on him circa “Good Will Hunting,” and he’s pretty much my only teenage celebrity crush that has withstood the test of time and doesn’t embarrass me in retrospect.
“I’m also that one person sticking up for The Age of Innocence, so: grain of salt.”
I love that movie. It’s one of the only ones that I can stomach Winona Ryder in mostly because she plays that kind of manipulative wounded but canny bitch really, really well. You hate her but you can see where she’s just trying to survive in the constraints of the time, but that’s Wharton for you. I started to go on but realized that I’d just take up more space fangirling on the movie which you already like so. :)
My 2nd boyfriend almost broke up with me when I fell asleep during “Mean Streets”. To make up for it (ha!) I have now watched everything Scorsese has done except for Gangs of New York and this one. My love for Daniel Day Lewis couldn’t overcome my distaste for Cameron Diaz but I have The Departed on the Netflix.
I really need to see it. I know I do; I grew up in Boston, I love Matt Damon, etc. But it still just ticks me off that the whole thing was ripped off from Infernal Affairs – which was awesome, and with hot asian dudes too. I just wanted the press, or the actors, or SOMEBODY to acknowledge that; but because of all the swirl about Scorsese, it didn’t really happen.
Rumor has it Matt Damon is here in Denver for the DNC. I’m keeping my eyes quite peeled. (Affleck is supposed to be here too, but that is interesting mostly for the possiblity of some Sydney Bristow sightings…)
I thought Farmiga was fine. I can’t decide if I think her relationship with Damon was subtle, or just underwritten; I suspect that the whole convo she has with Costigan about whether she lies is supposed to reverberate much larger later on than it does.
But Sullivan’s impotence; she’s clearly not on board totally with Sullivan but they keep moving from place to place in the relationship anyway, because they think they’re supposed to; she knows in her heart he’s sketchville but she goes ahead and gets pregnant…she acted that scene quite well, I thought, looking sort of sad in it, but they could have done a *bit* more with that subplot. It’s kind of a confusing role, so she did well with it, given that, but it’s one of those “ancillary to the plot, except as regards the heroes’ egos” roles for women that’s tough to get a star turn out of. Not an egregious example of it, but still.
That “What about the baby?” exchange where she DKs him is pretty rad, though.
I think you finally explained why I can’t stand Goodfellas and why I enjoyed The Departed, when they’re so similar in so many respects. Ray Liotta’s “acting” makes me grind my teeth and I thought DiCaprio/Damon were excellent.
And I guess it serves me right for putting on a Scorsese film during his visit, but watching Nicholson’s hookers ‘n blow scene with my father-in-law had to rank in the top ten “…awk-warrrrrrd” moments of my life. Thanks a heap, Marty.
Totally agreed with this review (except I enjoyed Nicholson being his usal Nicholsonian self), my one other nitpick is that I wished he’d filmed more of it in Boston. I know you love NYC and everything Marty but c’mon, if you’re going for a Bostonian mood film it in Boston! Maybe it’s just because I live in Beantown but I could definitely tell the difference between the stuff filmed here and the stuff filmed in NYC.
I’ll also add the the comic relief in the form of Alec Baldwin was truly awesome. I loves me some Baldwin and he did not disappoint.
I liked The Age of Innocence, too. Ryder’s the weak link, for me, and some of Marty’s stylistic choices felt out of place given the subject and setting, but it’s one of my favourite Day-Lewis performances; so subtle in comparison to his usual leap-off-the-screen style.
…However, I must admit I think Goodfellas is overrated. *Ducks* I liked it but didn’t love it. A lot of that has to do with my distaste for Ray Liotta and my absolute blind hatred of Joe Pesci. Cannot stand that guy. I just about ground my teeth into dust when he won the Oscar. Yeah, don’t get up, I’ll throw myself out.
Anyway, re: The Departed, I agree with just about everything you said in your review, although Alec Baldwin was maybe a bigger source of enjoyment for me than Wahlberg. I like Marky Mark fine – he was the best thing about I *Heart* Huckabees and he was great in this – but Baldwin just looks like he’s having so much fun. It’s infectious.
I do love this movie (watched it again just last night on HBO for the billionth time), except for…THE RAT. Aside from the rat of anviliciousness, everyone brought their A-game, and Alec Baldwin was a hoot.
As far as Raging Bull goes, I’m pretty sure the term “glacial pacing” was coined for it. Beautiful film to look at, but c’mon Marty, stop farting around with the lights and tell me a story.
My only quibble with The Departed, which I think is quite good, is that as soon as DiCaprio gave her that envelope, I knew exactly how the rest of the movie was going to play. It was entirely obvious that he would wind up getting killed, and she would have to decide whether to turn it over. I really, really felt like that was extremely obvious and should have been done differently, and it really did kill some suspense that otherwise would have been present.
I totally agree about the rat shot; that’s the kind of thing that I honestly think could only come from somebody like Scorsese, because nobody will tell him it’s a hack thing to do. Nobody will say, “Dude…no.” I could be wrong — maybe he didn’t want the shot and somebody else did, but it feels to me like one of those things that happens when you’re too infallible in the popular imagination.
Oh, Sars, well done. Word, word, word to your thoughts on the Departed and The Age of Innocence (not to mention guys with Bahston accents); you also perfectly encapsulated, in a way I had never quite been able to do, why I never liked Raging Bull as much as I thought I was “supposed” to.
But, yeah:
*The Departed was totally carried along for me by the energy, commitment, and skill of the young guys. I mean, when Wahlberg’s hothead, hair-trigger cop makes freaking Alec Baldwin’s hothead, hair-trigger cop look… silly… in comparison, he must be doing something right.
*SO SICK of Jack Nicholson. His is the kind of scenery-chewing perversity that has the precise opposite of its intended effect: it makes my attention wander. Every time he was on screen, I started composing to-do lists while waiting for the “real” actors to come back.
*Marty: FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, FIND A NEW SONG!!1! It’s past time to shitcan “Gimme Shelter”; it has long since lost any signifying value. The Stones should be paying YOU royalties by now. I mean, damn.
I’m torn about Vera Farmiga in this movie. I think she’s a great and very expressive actress, and for that I enjoyed watching her, but the character for me was flawed even beyond the already-discussed flaws of the typical main woman’s role in movies like this. I just really had trouble buying that, as a professional and apparently somewhat experienced police head-shrinker, she would quickly drop trou for not one but two fucked-up but charming cops she was supposed to be treating, after they both called her profession a crock.
I’m with you 100%. I liked the movie, but JESUS EFF! The Rat? Really? A RAT? I also totally cringed that every person with boobs in that movie (except Nicholson… ZING!) is so worthless and two dimensional. Is Scorsese ALWAYS that misogynistic? How’d I miss that before? All I could hear during that one scene was Sars’ voice in my brain saying “how does anybody get police work done in BAHstin when there are chicks to be dogged?”
One more voice added to the small choir in the darkness that prefers “The Age of Innocence” to “Raging Bull,” and not just because the book is my second-favorite Wharton (if anything, that would make me tougher on it).
But I have weird taste re: Scorsese in general. I consider “The Last Waltz” his best film. The only person I know who might have had my back on that one is the late Pauline Kael. I’ve shown it to people who aren’t familiar with and couldn’t possibly give less of a shit about The Band or the other performers, and seen them just mesmerized by it (even with all of Robbie Robertson’s on-stage preening and druggy self-mythologizing interviews…but even those exert a weird pull). What beautiful, intoxicating filmmaking.
I can do my part to nudge you off the fence re: Farmiga and her character: underwritten. But — fine, really. We all knew going in that it was a boys’ movie, didn’t we? One of those where, five years down the line, you see it again on TV and you go, “Oh, right! There’s an actress in this, isn’t there?”
I remember when Damon first hit the scene, there were comments about a passing physical resemblance to DiCaprio — I believe Gleiberman mentioned it in his review of “Good Will Hunting.” Of course, now, they’re both such mega-celebrities and they have their respective niches and you can’t imagine anyone confusing them. But it was astute of Scorsese to make use of the similarity by putting them in a film in which they play “mirror” characters. Probably my favorite shot is the one in the elevator in which they’re side by side, looking interchangeable.
I found it odd at the time and still do that DiCaprio got the nomination for “Blood Diamond,” which I thought was much the weaker of the two performances. I don’t usually dwell on fake accents, because they’re a component of a performance, not the whole of one, and sometimes people seize on a less-than-authentic-sounding accent as a snide, lazy way of dismissing someone’s work. But he was struggling so much to keep it consistent from scene to scene in BD that it did detract from the performance. Someone very early on should have seen that it wasn’t working and contrived some reason for the character to speak without one, or with a lighter one.
“United 93” only received a best director nomination (among major categories), didn’t it? The other nominees were “Babel,” “The Queen,” “Little Miss Sunshine,” and “Letters from Iwo Jima.” Scorsese’s movie and “The Queen” (which I don’t think deserved its “glorified TV movie with great performance” marginalization) were the ones I liked.
I too found the soundtrack to be too self-referential in song choice, and worse, poorly laid over the other sound. I kept wanting a volume knob to reach for so that the other action could be heard.
Baldwin and Winstone were terrific in their supporting roles. DiCaprio, although he looks and plays older now, still sounds like a fifteen-year-old. (And that hasn’t improved, if I’m to believe the trailers for Body of Lies.)
But the highlight for me was Damon. He is definitely value added to any project.
“I could be wrong — maybe he didn’t want the shot and somebody else did, but it feels to me like one of those things that happens when you’re too infallible in the popular imagination.”
No, I think you’re probably right. If there hadn’t been other lazy/hackneyed visuals, I might be on board with that shot being an outlier or not his choice, but he was clearly pretty content to let the Mart-o-Tron 4000 do a lot of the directing.
sars, i love your movie reviews. even when i disagree you manage to get stuff soundly right. what did you think of leonardo dicaprio getting shot? I had the most problems with that part of the film, because as you hint at, Scorsese sets things up without regard for the story or follow through. There’s no way that Leo’s character would have gotten into an elevator…it’s just so stupid, and against how smart he played it the whole film. It all felt contrived in order to kill him and set the nihilist tone up.
Yeah, the rat in front of the state house was stupid, but it goes with overstating the setup of the movie in the first place.
Having seen the original INFERNAL AFFAIRS series, Scorsese made just enough changes while sticking almost shot-by-shot to the Hong Kong original to annoy me while watching the first time to openly wonder, “why’d he change that?” For example:
1. Vera Farmiga’s character were two separate women in the original, so that weird love-triangle thing wasn’t there. I didn’t really see the point of making her the love interest of both characters.
2. All the events that lead up to the first drug bust took place in like 2 minutes, so that when the police come up empty, they more or less state the plot of the movie 6 minutes into it. This helped shorten the movie, as the use of the flashback prologue eliminated the need to show how DiCaprio infiltrated and why he’s trusted.
3. Wahlberg’s character was more or less invented. Though he was AWESOME, it also required a rewrite of the endgame, as Sheen’s counterpart in the original was the only police officer that knew DiCaprio’s original identity, so his death screwed him that much more. After Sheen got killed, I was asking, “so how’s Sullivan going to get away with Dingham, because Dingham’s going to come back in like a week and tell them what’s up.”
There was enough changes to the plot that I couldn’t even get to the nitpick of the acting, though I think they should have recast Nicholson so he didn’t seem so drug-crazed and basically asking his guys to refill his management position.
@natasha: I didn’t have a problem with it. Damon shooting everyone *else*, I didn’t love; I can’t speak to the plot of the other thing, so I don’t know if that was “necessary” or what, but in a 150-minute movie, killing everyone in sight seems kind of like you just don’t want to attend to the wrapping up of details later. And that’s fine; we don’t have to see every denouement. It just didn’t seem thought out.
I’m probably the only one who thinks Scorcese won for the right film. This is the first time I’ve felt he had the best film of the year. He’s had a lot of top-5 finishes (and therefore worthy of most of his nominations), but felt most of his recent output were just short of being great – very good, yes, but not quite there. I liked “The Aviator” but didn’t feel emotionally involved in it. My feelings about “Gangs of New York” I summed up in the comments with Sars’s review (I’m the one who felt it was 3 hours of “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” I’ve always despised “GoodFellas” and liked “Raging Bull” but found it extremely slow. However, 2 of my favorites are “The Last Temptation of Christ,” which was brilliant, but uneven, and “Mean Streets”. I’ll also back Sars up on the love for “Age of Innocence.”
Sars, that gold dome belongs to the Massachusetts State House, so it’s supposed to let you know that 1) he has political aspirations and 2) he’s living in Beacon Hill, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the country. That’s why the girlfriend asks him how he can afford it on a cop’s salary — it’s not just that it’s a really nice apartment, it’s that to afford a place in that area you’d have to, oh, I don’t know, be married to a ketchup heiress or something.
I am 150% with you on that last shot. I was willing to forgive the sound beating I’d received from the symbolism stick up to that point, but using it to crush my skull is unacceptable.
I consider “The Last Waltz” his best film.
Could not agree with you more. Marty’s special relationship with Robbie helps, I think, and Levon Helm sure didn’t care for it much, but I adore that film (it’s the only one of Scorsese’s that I own). His Bob Dylan doc, No Direction Home, is also excellent.
Marty also has a definite style, and Sars covered the more infuriating aspects of his style quite well. He knows how to tell a story, however, which is why I continue to enjoy his films even though he needs to quit playing with camera angles. If we can tell you’re playing with camera angles, you’re doing it too much. I love the Rolling Stones as much as Scorcese, but he really should rest both Gimme Shelter & Layla. Put the Ipod on shuffle, Marty – there are other good songs out there.
I didn’t have a problem with the rat – to me a less than 5 second anvil after the plot was finished wasn’t enough to get bothered about. I do have to disagree with Sars’s comment that Scorcese’s direction was mostly the visuals and left the actors largely unsupervised. Yeah, Marty’s visual cues are all there, but for an ensemble cast, even one as talented as this one, to all be firing on all cylinders as this cast did (although I’ll grant, Jack played Jack again) – I don’t think that happens just through casting. Although Walberg is getting better as an actor, I don’t think he puts in that performance under a lesser director. I usually am disappointed in Alec Baldwin as an actor, but have found that 2 of his perfomances I like best (“The Aviator” and “The Departed”) are in Scorcese films. I felt that 2 of the 3 best performances that year were Damon & DiCaprio – both of whom have put in consistently great work in the past – and was surprised that neither was nominated for “The Departed” (DiCaprio was better in “The Departed” than “Blood Diamond” but was good there as well.) I felt Scorcese did a great job managing both DiCaprio’s & Damon’s separate (but eventually converging) storylines, and yet he managed to keep the tension level high. Martin Sheen was also an underrated performance.
Word on the Jack Nicholson hate, or at least for Nicholson’s “acting”. He behaves; he doesn’t act. I’m pretty sure that Jack’s been cashing checks for caricaturing Jack Torrance over the past twenty-five years or so. The only exception I’ve noticed was “About Schmidt”.
Even in the days of “Good Vibrations” (EWW) I couldn’t get with Wahlberg as cute or even passably attractive, but I’ve seen him do a good job with several roles now (Dignam among them), so yay for that.
You know that fashion rule, the one about looking at yourself in a mirror and taking off the first big, obvious accessory that catches your eye b/c it ruins the visual flow or something? I would think the same theory would hold for filmmaking, and that for that reason alone the clunky rat thing would have had to go. I’m not Scorsese, so probably wrong there, but eh.
I just love Matt Damon. He could play a lisping, curly-haired six-year-old girl in a rags-to-riches ballerina story set in 1986 Mobile, Alabama, and I would buy tickets for my friends so we all could watch. It’s probably because–and I’m totally serious here–he is a [shorter] dead ringer for my husband. For reals, y’all. Watching him take a bullet in the squash is more traumatic than you’d think, for exactly that reason.
I don’t have much to add. I saw the movie despite my dislike to DiCaprio and didn’t regret the decision. I do have a funny anecdote regarding the movie, though.
My friend’s father sat through, oh, 2/3rds of the movie thinking that Damon and DiCaprio were the same actor and character. I still giggle thinking of just how confusing the movie must have seemed to him.
Love this movie…Hey, Sars, did you know that the bar scenes were filmed in Sunset Park? At a little hole-in-the-wall pub called Irish Haven on 59th and 4th. Open all night, AND sometimes they let you smoke inside. But you didn’t hear it from me.
From the spirited discussion alone, I am adding “The Departed” to my Netflix this morning.
Kelly, that’s funny; my mom refused to see it because she knew she wouldn’t be able to tell Damon and DiCaprio apart well enough to follow the plot. Which is a bummer for her, because it’s a very good movie, and they’re both fantastic in it.
And Damon’s accent is seriously so hot.
I completely agree with what Sean said above regarding Infernal Affairs and its effect on how one views The Departed. In my mind, every change made was a bad decision.
The decision to merge the two female characters was particularly awful. I did not see why it was necessary to draw yet another connection between the Damon and DiCaprio characters. Then again I guess I should be surprised that they were not secretly brothers.
@Sars: “but he was clearly pretty content to let the Mart-o-Tron 4000 do a lot of the directing.” Agreed, which is the only reason he could have felt it was okay to use “Gimme Shelter” again… totally diluting the impact of all the other times he’s used it. Not that it isn’t sexy.
I didn’t see this film until it hit cable, and now I cannot get enough. Praise the power of the Tivo that allows me to ff through every scene featuring the chick. Why would I waste my time when there is Wahlberg + Baldwin? Freaking Alec Baldwin, man. I don’t care how many little kids he cusses, I love him in any context. But nobody does it for me like Wahlberg, let’s keep it real. He pays off so well in the end because I have been WAITING for him the entire time.
@Sean: Vera Farmiga’s character were two separate women in the original, so that weird love-triangle thing wasn’t there. I didn’t really see the point of making her the love interest of both characters.
@Dan: The decision to merge the two female characters was particularly awful. I did not see why it was necessary to draw yet another connection between the Damon and DiCaprio characters.
This is just my own particular bite o’ bitterness, but there’s an easy answer to your very sensible questions, gentlemen. Hollywood only budgets for one female character per Important Movie, and that character is: the girlfriend. Oh, sometimes she’s the wife, but her function is invariably as an appendage to one – or in this case, two – of the male characters, because she doesn’t count.
I’ve always liked DiCaprio, and Alec Baldwin is hilarious in this, but I just gotta pile on and say about Matt Damon’s performance: DAMN. It’s not every day where you can look at an actor’s face and just know what’s going through his character’s mind. Amazing work.
And yes, the Boston accent is totally hot.
As for Jack: I didn’t see the movie until it was on DVD, and I kept waiting for Jack Nicholson’s character to scare me, because everyone had talked about how he was SO SCARY, and… yeah, no. Maybe I’m just desensitized or something, but it was pretty much your generic PsychoGroupieCocaineCrazy Jack performance, and the last time that scared me was The Shining (and really, even then the twin girls were much scarier). Blah.
Of course, I don’t know that you can blame Scorcese for Jack’s performance; I have a theory that by this point, trying to actually direct Nicholson is about equivalent to herding cats in a hurricane. I have this mental image of everyone letting Jack twirl around in a corner by himself while Scorcese works with all the other actors who actually can be worked with.
This is so interesting – I was so ridiculously pissed that they were doing an American remake of Infernal Affairs in the first place that my love for Matt Damon couldn’t get me to see it. It’s been long enough since I first saw Infernal Affairs now though, so I might just be able to watch The Departed with far less bias than if I’d seen it in the theaters, considering I barely remember the female characters, and now that I think about it, I might be confusing certain parts of the story with plot elements in Hard Boiled. There isn’t a shoot out in a restaurant filled with bird cages in Infernal Affairs, is there?
Wow. Long sentence, that.
“I should also admit right now that a Boston accent gives me the tingles.”
Me too! I don’t know why. I’m a sucker for accents in general, but the Boston accent is not…aesthetically pleasing in the way that a soft Southern accent or clipped British one can be. And yet it totally does it for me. I think accents generally give an exotic spin on mundane words, so anything that sounds “different” will get the job done. And the Boston accent is so easily identifiable.
Also, I think I saw Good Will Hunting at an extremely impressionable age and the Boston accent + Damon dimples + secret pain of a tough guy that can only be healed by the love of a good woman were emblazoned on my brain.
… Am I confused for thinking that the baby was Costigans and she only Damons character he was the dad because well, to keep an even keel?
I’m with you Bree. When Costigan gives her the envelope and says he is giving her something to keep safe, the look on her face said he already had.
I think she was willing to stay with Damon’s character because of that conversation they had when he tells her that she is the one that will have to leave because he can deal with something being wrong his entire life.
The only thing that TRULY TRULY bugged me about this movie was the scene when Costigan is following Damon out of the theater. Why the hell was the ringer turned on on his phone? It had been off during the entire time he was watching Damon and Jack in the theater, but he walks outside to “stealthily” follow the guy and turns it back on?
It bugs me every time I think of it. For me its a much bigger flaw in an other wise really great film than the rat at the end.
I just gotta pile on and say about Matt Damon’s performance: DAMN. It’s not every day where you can look at an actor’s face and just know what’s going through his character’s mind. Amazing work.
@Leigh Butler: I agree absolutely with this (speaking of piling on). I think Damon doesn’t get nearly enough credit for hinting at the inner life of his characters. It was true in The Departed, and it was true in Ripley. Damon did a great job of showing Ripley’s restless, ceaselessly fabricating mind. Everything Ripley does is a construct, a baffle. The viewer can see so much of what he’s thinking. He makes every gesture, and every shift of expression, matter. For my money, it’s a much more interesting and detailed performance than Jude Law’s Dickie.