The Departed
Time to take a look and see if one of the masters of mob movies can still give us a great mob movie. This is The Departed.
The big city is home to many criminals, one of which has complete control of it all, which is Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). He's not all bad since he did help raise Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) from childhood and even help put him through the police academy. This may just be what Costello needed since both Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) are putting a rookie cop, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), undercover to try and win Costello's trust. So now it becomes who will go out first. Will Costello get away thanks to Sullivan's help on the inside of the SIU or will he get arrested thanks to the help of Costigan?
Right off the bat, I have to compliment the writers. It was written by the same guy that did Kingdom of Heaven and he just did an amazing job here. Yes, I know this is a remake of a foreign film, I haven't seen the foreign film at the time of writing this and for all I know, he could have added more to this movie that wasn't in the original. So fantastic job. I also thought the casting was spot on, except for one that I'll get into later. DiCaprio, Damon, Nicholson, and Wahlberg are all perfect choices for this movie and they all turn in fantastic performances that just make the movie perfect. As for some of the smaller details, I did like the message about how lying can be good or bad depending on how you look at it and I also loved the soundtrack.
If I really had to find some kind of problem with this movie, it would be Alec Baldwin. He just doesn't seem to do much other than be Alec Baldwin. However, I don't see how his role could be improved and I can't really say the film would have gained anything from his character being removed. So it's not really that bad.
So should you watch The Departed? Definitely. It's one of my favorite movies of the year and one of the few that actually gets better and better with each passing second, instead of having a few good moments here and there.
The big city is home to many criminals, one of which has complete control of it all, which is Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). He's not all bad since he did help raise Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) from childhood and even help put him through the police academy. This may just be what Costello needed since both Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) are putting a rookie cop, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), undercover to try and win Costello's trust. So now it becomes who will go out first. Will Costello get away thanks to Sullivan's help on the inside of the SIU or will he get arrested thanks to the help of Costigan?
Right off the bat, I have to compliment the writers. It was written by the same guy that did Kingdom of Heaven and he just did an amazing job here. Yes, I know this is a remake of a foreign film, I haven't seen the foreign film at the time of writing this and for all I know, he could have added more to this movie that wasn't in the original. So fantastic job. I also thought the casting was spot on, except for one that I'll get into later. DiCaprio, Damon, Nicholson, and Wahlberg are all perfect choices for this movie and they all turn in fantastic performances that just make the movie perfect. As for some of the smaller details, I did like the message about how lying can be good or bad depending on how you look at it and I also loved the soundtrack.
If I really had to find some kind of problem with this movie, it would be Alec Baldwin. He just doesn't seem to do much other than be Alec Baldwin. However, I don't see how his role could be improved and I can't really say the film would have gained anything from his character being removed. So it's not really that bad.
So should you watch The Departed? Definitely. It's one of my favorite movies of the year and one of the few that actually gets better and better with each passing second, instead of having a few good moments here and there.