No 208 – The Departed
Director – Martin Scorsese
I had watched almost all of this film and then, much to the dismay of myself and my house mates, the disk ruddy conked out. So I had to send it to LoveFilm, who swiftly provided a replacement and we watched it again. From the start. We didn't mind though. Because it is brill!
We begin by instantly setting the scene. With a foul mouthed (and occasionally racist) monologue from Jack Nicholson. After all, this is the Oscar Winning Best Film with the most 'fuck's in it. True fact, fact fans. Is it Scorsese's best? No. But it is bloody great.
Lets look at the strengths:
Firstly the cast. It is beyond good. It is beyond stellar. This film has so many excellent actors (and 'big name' actors) that it starts to get embarrassing. I reckon several smaller films probably failed to get funding because Scorsose stole all the male leads.
I mean look at it:
Leonardo DiCaprio
Matt Damon
Alec Baldwin
Martin Sheen
Ray Winstone
Mark Wahlberg
Jack Nicholson.
This is a very male-heavy film, but the male cast is impeccable and just beautiful to watch. Especially as they bounce off each other. Whilst the female roles are mostly there as eye candy, we do have the wonderful Vera Farmiga offering a strong character; although she is still often relegated to the role of love interest, or as a means to simply complicating the plot... all in all, this just isn't the most feminist of films.
Matt Damon's character is charismatic with an undercurrent of danger... but then the man played Bourne, so you'd expect him to be able to play that kind of role. Meanwhile, DiCaprio is sporting his little goatee which reminds us that he is in a serious film playing a serious role, and is not just a handsome little boy. He also scowls a lot and punches a lot of people. However, whilst the two leads are superb, they are still playing roles which we know they can do well. So let us look at some of the other stand-out roles.
Beginning with Wahlberg's Staff Sgt Dignam. This part is the closest thing this film has to comic relief. He is abrasive, argumentative, foul-mouthed and utterly hilarious. This is a film which has a lot of quick witted foul-mouthed one liners, and whilst Alec Baldwin's Captain Ellerby gets a good few, the majority of them fly from the angry mouth of Dignam.
For example when DiCaprio's Billy Costigan is asked whether he knows what a specific police department does, he replies that he has an idea - which causes Dignam to launch a tirade of abuse:
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's say you have no idea and leave it at that, okay? No idea. Zip. None. If you had an idea of what we do, we would not be good at what we do, now would we? We would be cunts. Are you calling us cunts?
It is gloriously aggressive and wholly inappropriate. Which pretty much sums up the majority of the film. The language is just ridiculously foul. Love it.
But, if you think Dignam is crass and abrasive, you ain't seen nothing yet. Because with Jack Nicholson we are introduced to a gangster nightmare. Frank Costello. An arrogant, drug using, violent, over-confident bastard. Who, throughout the film, is getting gradually more paranoid and subsequently more unhinged. This is a far more terrifying, far more unstable criminal kingpin. This is Nicholson's Joker cranked up to the next level and made all the more terrifying by the realism he is grounded in. And villains are just more scary when they're realistic.
So, the casting is top notch and the script has zinging dialogue, but there is more. The music is wonderful - whether we have the aggressive Irish American punk of the Dropkick Murphies summing up the entire criminal mentality in one barrage of noise or the tragic lust fuelled romance of the film perfectly underpinned by Pink Floyd's haunting Comfortably Numb.
All these little notes help us go back to Scorsese's Oscar. This film's real skill is how subtle it is. Every aspect of it just works. The camera is there without any flash gimmicks - it just tells the story. The music is ideal for each situation. The entire film is just perfectly cast. It may not be the most obvious and deserving film for an Oscar, but it is wonderfully planned - and it is masterfully executed. And as a nod to a director who has ruddy deserved an Oscar time and time again - it makes sense.
So, I've managed to talk about what I like about the film without really mentioning the script and the plot. Which is good because this is a film with some many twists and turns. With double and triple crossing that it would be difficult to explain without giving it away. All I can say is that you should give yourself 2 and a half hours and just watch it.
And whilst I've never seen Infernal Affairs - if it is half as good as this English Speaking remake, then it will be a marvellous film - and THAT is a bloody rare thing to say about a practice I think is usually pointless and wrong and can be, at worst, disrespectful to the source material.
No comments:
Post a Comment