Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
1/15/07
A great concept and an amazing
all-star cast service the unfortunately muddled screenplay that is The
Departed. Martin Scorsese will redoubtably make another run at
his long-denied Best Director Oscar, but this is far from his best work.
Gangster Frank Costello (Jack
Nicholson) rules his Boston neighborhood. He punishes his enemies,
rewards his friends, and is always on the lookout for new recruits.
That includes kids like Colin Sullivan, who grows up (as Matt Damon) to
join the police academy and wind up on the fast track, all the while feeding
Costello the information he needs to stay one step ahead of the cops.
Meanwhile, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) can't shake his family's
criminal background, even when he becomes a cop. An elite undercover
unit led by Oliver Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) recruits
him for a job no sane man would seem to want: get thrown off the
force and join Costello's organization, all the while feeding information
back to the Police. As the police get closer and closer to an arrest,
they assign Sullivan to find the mole within their ranks, and Costello
demands that Costigan find the one within his own organization. As
the double-crosses and bodies pile up, Costigan finds that the only person
he can trust is a psychiatrist (Vera Farmiga), who just happens to be Sullivan's
fiance.
Got all that? It's
actually the recipe for a nifty thriller, and for a while The Departed
is just that. Unfortunately, things that seem like the foundation
for coming revelations (like the way Farmiga's character is so central
to both men's lives) turn out to be simple coincidences and William Monahan's
screenplay can find no more clever way out of the tangled web it's weaved
than to simply have everyone start shooting each other until only one character
remains. I've never seen Infernal Affairs, the 2002 Hong Kong
thriller upon which The Departed is based, but I am curious to see
if it does a better job of seeing the story through to the end.
The performances are The
Departed's greatest asset, starting with another awesome star turn
by DiCaprio. It's hard to say exactly what motivates Costigan to
burn his life down in the name of justice, but he makes those mysterious
goals easy to accept, and then shines in his struggle to hang on as the
complications spiral out of control. Nicholson walks a high wire
as Costello: at his best, he's electrifyingly sinister. There
are also times when his tendency to ham it up gets the better of him.
Farmiga is a nice find: she too must provide us with motivation that
doesn't seem to be on the page, and succeeds wonderfully. In the
supporting cast, Wahlberg is sensational, necessarily hard to read for
the purposes of the plot and memorably explosive. Alec Baldwin delivers
some big laughs as another of his patented odious bosses, and, boy, is
it ever nice to have Martin Sheen back in the movies after his TV sabbatical.
Less successful is Damon, perhaps because Sullivan as written proves to
be so much less interesting than it seems like he should be: at the
end of the day, the double-agent is nothing but a check-cashing survivor,
and a dull one at that.
Because of the caliber of
the people involved in its' creation, The Departed will inevitably
be overpraised. In truth, it's an occasionally gripping thriller
that ultimately runs out of gas. It's well worth seeing for all the
first-rate acting on display, but by no means the classic it had the tools
to be. |
