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By WAYNE KLEINg
It's a tricky business
adapting a foreign movie for an American audience.
Martin Scorsese's "The Departed" captures all the
best elements of the original film "Infernal
Affairs" and works traditional Scorsese themes and
material into the film making it very much his own
and every bit the equal to the Chinese film.
Featuring outstanding performances all around
perhaps this film will finally earn Scorsese the
Oscar for Best Director that he deserved for
"Raging Bull" over twenty years ago.
Two state trooper academy graduates one an
undercover officer named Billy Costigan (Leonardo
DiCaprio) and a mole in the department Colin
Sullivan (Matt Damon) working for crime lord Frank
Costello (Jack Nicholson) have opposite goals.
Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Sgt. Dignam
(Mark Wahlberg) charge Costigan with gathering as
much dirt as possible on Sullivan so they can
finally take him out. They work up a false history
for Costigan, which includes a brief stint in
prison to create credibility. By comparison
Sullivan is a boy scout who rises to the top of
his department rapidly working for Ellerby (Alec
Baldwin) in a rival department. Both are charged
with ferreting out the mole in their respective
organizations and both are romancing the same
woman (Vera Farmiga) without ever meeting.
It's a brilliantly constructed game of cat and
mouse with each playing the respective role at one
point in time. Filled with brilliant visuals that
echo the themes of the script adapted by William
Monahan ("Kingdom of Heaven") from the script by
Siu Fai Mak and Felix Chong the film manages to
stay true to the elements that worked best in the
Chinese film while incorporating elements unique
to "The Departed." DiCaprio and Damon give
complex, compelling performances as opposite sides
of the same coin. Nicholson plays Costello with
psychopathic intensity at times without going too
far over the top. The entire cast gives stellar
performances but I'd like to note tree actors in
particularly who do the most with their limited
roles--Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen (who replaced
two other actors that had to drop out--Robert
DeNiro and Gerard McSorley) and Mark Whalberg all
three give intense performances and inhabit their
characters fully. Vera Farmiga handles her role of
Madolyn equaling the big boys despite the fact
that her character isn't given as much screen time
by comparison. Special note should also be made of
actor Ray Winstone ("The Proposition," "King
Arthur" and "Cold Mountain") who gives a nice edgy
performance as Mr. French.
We get a number of worthwhile extras including
deleted scenes with introductions by Martin
Scorsese. The feature-length TCM profile "Scorsese
on Scorsese" appears here and it's a worthwhile
extra even if it wasn't produced for the DVD. It
provides an intelligent assessment of Scorsese's
career. "The Story of the Boston Mob" provides
information on the real-life gangster behind Jack
Nicholson's character. When Scorsese and the
writer Americanized the film they didn't just
"adapt" it for an American audience so much as
remade the film into a classic Scorsese project.
"Crossing Criminal Cultures" gives us insight into
how Little Italy's crime world informs Scorsese's
films. It's quite good as well.
I am disappointed that the film doesn't come with
a feature length commentary by Scorsese although
I'm not surprised but given the gift-of-gab that
Scorsese has demonstrated, I still would have
liked to hear his thoughts on the making of the
film.
The film runs 2 hours and 22 minutes. Scorsese
uses every minute to allow the actors to build
their characters or for brilliant set pieces. The
film does sag a bit towards the middle but that's
partially due to its complex set up for the story
during the first twenty minutes of the film. |
