The Departed: Martin Scorsese's new film

[theBruiser500]

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He just about steals the movie, not an easy thing to do with that cast.

Sometimes his delivery is just spectacularly delicious. When he says, "I am God" in Malice, or when he imitates Anthony Hopkins ("How do you propose to l-yure him") in The Edge.

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andy, random question but what do yo uthink of the Edge? i love tha tmovie think its a real sleeper. music, beautiful sceneary, acting...

[theBruiser500]

just saw this and thought it's a good movie. i agree with someone who said the ending fell apart. i think the film could have gone a more serious route and pulled it off and been a great movie but it was a little wacky at the end. it was also too sad of a movie for me, there was only a few moments of joy for me when dicaprio just told damon to "shut up" and punched his face a lot. great acting all around, and good script.

[traz]

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Will note one interesting thing - William has only one person he can honestly trust towards the end; a woman. Perhaps one other person would have been trustworthy but he took the fast way down from a building.

Anyway, reliability is rare. Very rare indeed.

-Zeno

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Pretty much the running theme of the movie is that people are two-faced and untrustworthy

[andyfox]

Indeed, that was the meaning of the final shot. Not just the people we saw in the movie, but those who work under the gold dome in the background.

[andyfox]

I liked it too. Certainly not a great movie, but I liked it anyway. I find myself re-watching it whenever it's on the tube. I thought Baldwin and Hopkins had a chemistry that made the movie interesting.

[andyfox]

It was almost as if Scorsese couldn't stand the sadness of the hero's demise and needed to make light of the whole thing. But Goodfellas ended this way, a frenetic pace with a comedic ending. Liotta didn't die at the end of Goodfellas, but his life, as he knew it, was over. There was a palpable sense of shock when DiCaprio met his fate in the theater I saw The Deaprted in. In Michael Mann's movies (Collateral; Heat), the "bad" guys die and the "good" guys don't. Not so in this one.

[MafiaPrince]

One thing I kind of debated with my girlfriend was the very last scene...Does Wahlberg know what Damon really was from the envelope DiCaprio gave the woman or was it just a random murder out of hate?

[llabb]

KDawg: Thanks, your assessment sounds good. I can't wait for Babel. Oh, and I heard that Warners deliberately released The Departed a little earlier than would be expected and wanted to go the mainstream route, because they're usually accused of being too heavyhanded, and haven't been successful winning the Oscar with the conventional route. Here, they wanted organic success and a backdoor route. Deny that they're pushing it for Oscar, and then when the public and critics both universally love it so much, accept its fanfare and its "rightful place" in the Oscar universe.

Basically, a stealth campaign, with a leg up from the grassroots support for it. Kinda like if King Kong had been a little more beloved and gotten widespread critical acclaim. And if it didn't turn out that way, with a lower-than-expected public/critical reception, then Warners can say oh well, we were never pushing it, it was just a great, great mainstream movie.

RBStore: Humor worked pretty well in The Departed, it's just a different flow. People pretty much loved the humor, as you can see here. But it's not as tense.

Zeno: Agree, it's a gem and the best mainstream film I've seen released this year, perhaps last year as well. Also, Leo has one other person he can trust. That he can go to, at least, even if he doesn't like him. That's part of what ruins the ending.

Traz: Yeah, that's one thing that comes out, although the movie could have dealt with questions of identity, morality, and motivation a lot, lot more. Who we really are inside, who we are vs. what we do, what gives us meaning, suffering, and others.

Mafia: Wahlberg knew. Should not be a question.

[Rick Nebiolo]

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Really enjoyed it. A slew of Oscar nominations for sure: for the movie, for Scorsese (and, I predict, a win), for Nicholson, for DiCaprio, and possibly for Damon and the woman (whose name I don't know).

I'm a sucker for Goodfellas, but this is right up there with it. It reminded me a bit of Heat, in that the Damon/DiCaprio characters were kind of mirror images in the way DiNiro/Pacino were in Heat. Also a bit of Donnie Brasco. The first few scenes, everybody in the theater oohs and aahs because, oh look, it's Leonardo DiCaprio, look it's Martin Sheen, look it's Alec Baldwin . . .

Nicholson is extremely funny, almost doing Marlon Brando doing Jack Nicholson.

The last shot (no pun intended) in the movie is wonderful.

It's definitely not a chick flick, but FWIW, Mrs. Fox loved it as well.

Don't miss it. Terrific entertainment.

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It's very good entertainment and the acting was great but I thought there were plot holes you could drive a double wide mobile home through.

The biggest plot hole IMO was the Damon character. He spends his entire youth grooming himself to become a top graduate of the Massachusetts State Police Academy (with a jump right into the perfect OC task force) just so he could be the Nicholson character's "inside guy". I didn't buy it. DiCaprio taking that big a risk to get inside Nicholson's organization wasn't that far behind.

I also thought more people should have been shot [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

~ Rick

[Rick Nebiolo]

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you should watch What's Eating Gilbert Grape, his other Oscar-nominated role.

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Probably one of Depp's best movies, a real underrated film that says a lot about life IMO.

~ Rick