Review of: The Departed

4/5 (minimum 1)

by martinp on 06 Jan 2007

The Departed is a remake of the classic, complex Hong Kong cops-and-crooks film "Infernal Affairs", transposed by director Martin Scorsese and an all-star cast to Irish gangsters in the USA (with the subtle Buddhist religious themes of the original becoming Roman Catholic). Both films have complex plots, demanding concentration, and are violent but in a believable and meaningful way. The start of this film is very different from the original, but as the film progresses it converges, with some sequences filmed almost shot-for-shot the same.

The Hollywood actors invest their characters with depth in a different way than the Hong Kong actors; Jack Nicholson especially introduces an unhinged quality to the lead gangster. If I could go back in time, I would watch this version and *then* Infernal Affairs, which for me is the slightly superior film. A crucial scene towards the end in which some characters die is directed perfunctorily in the Departed (people actually laughed in the cinema) whereas in Infernal Affairs the corresponding scene has chilling emotional impact.

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The Departed

1 Other Review, by... tom
Tags: alec-baldwin boston fiction film gangster jack-nicholson leonardo-dicaprio mark-wahlberg martin-scorsese martin-sheen matt-damon movie ray-winstone remake vera-farmiga violent
Homepage: http://thedeparted.warnerbros.com/
See Also: http://imdb.com/title/tt0407887/