The Departed - Rest in Peace!!. Review on The Departed Movie

Introduction

When a movie boasts of a star cast consisting of Leonardo Dicaprio, Jack Nicholson and Matt Damon, I just had to sit up and see it. The movie is a remake of a Hongkong crime thriller Infernal Affairs.

The Plot

Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) and Billy Costigan (Leonardo Dicaprio) are both new recruits passing out of the stable of Massachusetts State Police. While the good family past of Colin gives him a quick rise to a leadership role, the checkered family past of Billy is questioned by State Police Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen).

So while Sullivan assumes control of a team, Billy has to prove his worth and intentions by working as mole in the mob of Don Frank Castello (Jack Nicholson). The interesting thing here is that Sullivan is a plant from Frank Castello into the State Police. So we have two plants working for their respective organizations trying to take on the other.

So what happens? Which mole digs better? Check out this movie for the details.

Critic's Viewpoint

Given the storyline the movie was always going to hinge on three things, performances, strong dialogues and good direction.

Let's start with the performances, when you talk about Jack Nicholson, Leonardo Dicaprio and Matt Damon, you are talking about highly talented individuals who have proven their worth over and over again. Once again in Departed, the three of these give good performances. Leonardo Dicaprio excels in a suffering role which seems to come to him with ease. The pain and feeling of suppressed anger that he delivers on the screen is brilliant. He did the same in roles in Gangs of Newyork and the Aviator, and does the same again.

Jack Nicholson gives another eccentric characterization of the Frank Castello the crime lord. Calculative coolness and play of the eyes are the strengths of Jack and he again uses them to his best here. If Jack and Leonardo are the fire in the performances, then icy cool Matt is the ice in the movie.

Next up coming to the dialogues, I am sorry the movie disappointed me big time. If the idea of strong dialogues from Martin Scorcese is to have every sentence having 100s of 4 letter profanity, then I guess his idea is (4 letter profanity + ing) wrong!! There were a lot of places where the dialogues could have been nice and strong, but all we see throughout the movie is profane language to stress a point, to emote a point, to fight a point, make love and almost everything else.

Again coming to the way the movie is directed, I think Martin Scorcese missed a plot or two. For starters, revealing at the start itself that Matt Damon is a mole took 50% of the suspense of the whole game. The story picks up pace once both the moles are in place, but then again the amount of time these two moles seem to be communicating with their bosses and the casual nature of the whole thing is mind boggling. I mean using a SMS sitting in the back seat of the car just behind Frank Castello or sitting next to the Police Captain and SMSing message and so on and so forth.

There was an Hindi movie made a decade ago by the name of Drohkaal by an Indian director Govind Nihlani on a similar plot. I must say that when I compare Departed with that movie, it just does not come to be in the same league and the Hindi thriller. For any of you who are interested, I would recommend to check out this movie if you want to see the shades of this drama that Martin Scorcese misses out on.

Another stark contrast between Departed and Drohkaal is how the fear of the mob is shown over the movie. In Departed, Martin prefers to show with a lot of bloodshed and grotesque scenes with a cut hand here, a broken arm there and so on and so forth. Whereas, in Drohkaal the fear is shown at a more subtle level with controlled emotions and background music. I felt that the later option works better in these types of movies.

Statutory Warning

This movie is not for kids of any age for the profanity in language and drug usage depicted. I would say half the audience would be uncomfortable with the use of such profanity.

Summary

Big star cast, a big director and a remake of a hit thriller, works out to an average movie, because of direction and lack of strong (and not profane) dialogues.

All in all a three star rating from my side.