| MEDIOCREFELLAS : Martin Scorsese's 'The Departed' [4/10] |
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| Saturday, 14 October 2006 | |
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How ironic that, after forty years of film-making, Scorsese's very first bona-fide big box-office hit should also be one of his very few bona fide duds. The Departed is a disappointingly drab reworking of Andrew LAU Wai-keung and Alan MAK Siu-fai's overrated 2002 thriller Infernal Affairs, rather arbitrarily relocating the action from Hong Kong to Boston and casting Leonardo Di Caprio and Matt Damon as parallel moles within each others' organisations. Cop DiCaprio, as part of an elaborate scheme cooked up by his superiors Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg, earns the confidences of veteran mob-boss Jack Nicholson - while at the same time Nicholson's protege Damon is flying high in the Massachusetts state PD under the griffly avuncular guidance of Alec Baldwin. As if the neatness of the yin-yang scenario didn't sufficiently strain our credulity, both men end up romancing the same woman - shapely psychiatrist Vera Farmiga - which ultimately spells major trouble for both. As indicated by that pompous title, however, Scorsese and his scriptwriter William Monahan are much more interested in Thanatos than Eros: female characters are sidelined throughout, with Nicholson's fashion-plate girlfriend (Kristen Dalton) perhaps the most blatantly underwritten role in recent Hollywood history. Such lapses might conceivably be forgiven if The Departed had delivered on other fronts - but even during what are clearly supposed to be action set-pieces, Scorsese feels as though he's quarter-heartedly going through the motions, recycling tricks from his own glittering back-catalogue. And it certainly doesn't help that cinematographer Howard Shore, editor Thelma Schoonmaker and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, all capable of fine work on their day, are all uniformly out of sorts here. It's left to the actors to contribute what flavour there is, and while Damon and DiCaprio are never less than watchable, the former too often falls back on an unappealingly brash cockiness while the latter always looks more like a tormented teenager than a psychologically-conflicted adult. Supporting performances are variable: Baldwin, Wahlberg, and little-known Scottish thesp David Patrick O'Hara (putting several of his better-known colleagues to shame in a small but crucial role as a surly mob footsoldier) fare best; Ray Winstone (as Nicholson's right-hand man) has little to do; Nicholson himself is allowed to coast smugly along in middling gear. Nicholson, like Damon, might have profited from a firmer directorial hand - but that never remotely seems like materialising. Indeed, in the latter stages of this inordinately lengthy enterprise Scorsese somewhat desperately resorts to hommaging Michael Mann, the 'rival' (he co-produced Scorsese's The Aviator) who with Heat snatched away Scorsese's status as Hollywood's alpha-male auteur a decade ago. Whatever the faults of Mann's recent Miami Vice movie, its flashy bravado makes The Departed look like the work of a tired senior-citizen: during the numerous dead spots here, it's tempting to cheekily ponder a behind-the-scenes hypothesis whereby Mann and Scorsese have, in the manner of Nicholson and Sheen, somehow destabilised their "enemy" from within (Mann's mole being much the more effective 'plant'.) A wildly improbable scenario, of course - but much more thought-provoking, amusing and entertaining than anything Scorsese and Monahan manage to deliver. Neil Young 13th/14th October, 2006 THE DEPARTED : [4/10] : USA 2006 : Martin SCORSESE : 151 mins (BBFC timing) seen at Apollo cinema, Barrow-in-Furness (UK), 13th October 2006 - public show (paid £5.60) |
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