The Departed
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Written by William Monahan
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio,
Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson in best picture nominee The Departed (Photo credit should read HO/AFP/Getty Images) (AFP/Getty Images)
Related Articles
Internet Links
- Watch the trailer
- Test your Oscar trivia
- Guess the dress: Test your Oscar fashion IQ
- Liam Lacey on the best picture nominees
- Photogallery: Oscar's most outrageous moments
- Oscar poll: See you how you compare
- Photogallery: And the nominees are...
- Globe Oscar contest
- Full list of Oscar nominations
Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson,
Vera Farmiga
Classification: 18A
Rating: **½
To lovers of film, especially disenchanted lovers of American film, any new work by Martin Scorsese is a cause for excitement and a reason to hope. After all, Scorsese is a charter member of the pantheon, and directors of such talent may occasionally stray, but surely they always find their game again. He certainly did in No Direction Home, last year's documentary on Bob Dylan, although that achievement seemed partly built on the larger achievements of Dylan himself. Besides, Scorsese's reputation rests on his dramatic features where, alas, the dazzle has lately dimmed. The Aviator, Gangs of New York -- you had to be a senescent Oscar voter to see any overarching triumph in that twosome.
Yet The Departed promised to be different, and the buzz began. Rumour had it that the source material -- a rejigging of the tense Hong Kong hit Infernal Affairs -- was ideal for him, a return to the mean streets and mobsters of his glory days. Rumour had it that the cast, including Jack Nicholson in his first teaming with the director, was exceptional. Rumour had it that God was in His heaven and Martin Scorsese was back on track. Rumour was wrong.
Admittedly, his form looks fine at the outset, where two of Scorsese's favourite tropes -- the Stones on the soundtrack and a pre-credit sequence edited to fluid perfection -- have us hopping with anticipation. So does the nifty premise, which shifts the streets from New York to Boston and then pits a rat against a mole. Sullivan (Matt Damon) is a dirty detective who has worked his way up the ranks of the force -- the rat furtively reports to his mob boss (Nicholson).
Billy (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an undercover cop who has infiltrated the inner sanctum of the mobsters -- the mole secretly reports to his police boss (Martin Sheen).
Early on, the picture intercuts between them to establish their different milieus and their separate disguises. Predictably, the dirty cop is having no trouble pretending to be clean, but this very ease is problematic. Sullivan remains a cipher, leaving Damon with precious little character to develop. He relies on his screen charm, which can be considerable, and his Good Will Hunting accent, which is formidable, yet it's just so much dressing on an opaque window.
Meanwhile, down in the demimonde, the clean cop is filthy: Keeping bloodthirsty company, he's getting thoroughly doused. Yes, what with bullets fired between eyes and bottles smashed to faces and severed hands encased in zip-locked bags, there's gore aplenty here -- another Scorsese trademark from his vintage years. But, back then, the violence arose naturally (and thus frighteningly) out of the characterizations -- out of a raging bull's jealousy, or a goodfella's temper, or a taxi driver's pent-up ennui. This violence, however, jumps haphazardly out of the twitchy plot (courtesy of William Monahan's erratic script), and so it often seems gratuitous, inorganic, just splatter for splatter's sake.
Speaking of gratuitous, check out Nicholson, who, apparently channelling The Joker, mugs and rolls his eyes and delivers a performance as slovenly self-indulgent as his greasy comb-over. Astonishingly, Scorsese not only does nothing to rein him in, but occasionally adds an out-of-left-field sequence (the mobster in a literally operatic tryst with a couple of coke whores) that only encourages the guy's theatrics. The result? Rarely has a star's look-at-me turn so completely torpedoed a project. Whenever the picture threatens to gain some momentum, up pops Jack to stop it dead in its tracks. The loyal few may be laughing with him, but the rest of us are definitely laughing at him and -- here's how bad things get -- starting to find consolation in DiCaprio's far more credible work. Suffering through his enforced deception, feeling ever more guilty by association, he brings some actual weight to the role, an anxious sense of gravity.
In fact, as the narrative's twists bring the rat and the mole into dangerously close proximity, there are moments, even entire scenes, when the film sparks up intensely. But something always happens to reapply the damper. Like the wild unlikelihood of a love interest (Vera Farmiga) shared by hero and villain alike. Or the sight of Sheen looking as if he airmailed his performance from the bedroom of The West Wing. Or a false climax that comes with plenty of firepower but absolutely no heat. Or a real climax whose rat-a-tat-tat insouciance suggests that Scorsese has been doing some channelling too -- of Tarantino on a really off-day.
The Departed, we learn at one point, refers to the dearly departed, the dead, and why not. As so often before, the body count is high in a Martin Scorsese movie. But where once the bodies pulsated with life in all its vainglorious furor, here they drop like wooden ducks in an artificial pond. Always there were sinners, but never the sin of lifelessness.
