additional links
The Departed
The Departed was one of the Oscar movies for 2006, and it probably deserved to be. Where it doesn’t deserve to be is being reviewed on a dodgy movie site, and yet we don’t always get what we deserve. The Departed is directed by Martin Scorsese and as a result quite a lot was expected, including cops, mobsters and a large amount of violence. The mobsters were a surprise in that they were Irish, and not the Italian variety that we have come to know and love.
Jack Nicholson gave a very credible performance as the sleazy head of the local crime syndicate. In fact, you have to start to wonder just how sleazy Nicholson is in real life to be able to pull that sort of roll of time and again. Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon are both trying to move away from their pretty boy status, but no matter how hardcore they act, it’s not going to happen.
The plot of this one was a little hard to follow unless you paid a lot of attention. However, once you managed to wrap your head around who was good, who was bad, who was bad but pretending to be good, who was good and pretending to be bad and who was just misguided, the film was quite enjoyable and sucked you in. In fact, you didn’t even realise it was 2 and a half hours long until you looked at your watch during the credits.
Dodginess
As far as dodgy goes, there weren’t a whole lot of moments in this movie. But they did exist, you just had to want to find them. Although having said that, only two really stand out. The first occurs during a meeting between Jack Nicholson and Matt Damon, which occurs in a x-rated movie house. Basically, Jack, with his characteristic flair whips out a huge dildo. The second is after Leo’s boss gets thrown off the roof. He lands in front of Leo and there is a nice splatter of blood that just added that extra something to the scene. Despite these, the movie only manages a 1 on the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man scale.
Rewatchability Rating
As far as rewatching this movie goes, I’d have to put it in the same genre as films like Lucky Number Slevin and The Usual Suspects. You could probably rewatch it one or two times until you’d figured out all the twists and turns, but after that, I’m not so sure. It gets a resounding 2 on the rewatchability scale.
Most Memorable Quote
The script is fairly typical of a gangster film containing large amounts of swearing and vulgarity, but my favourite line comes while surveying the exchange with the Chinese. “Who the fuck are you?”, “I'm the guy who does his job. You must be the other guy.”
Final Thoughts
Overall, I enjoyed the film even though it lacked the dodginess that I have come to love. The film is definitely worth watching, so do yourself a favour and see it.