FAVOURITE MOVIES: Dearly Departed...

Flicked over onto sky movies two nights ago and caught the last 40 minutes of
The Departed (2006). I had forgotten just what a satisfying great chunk of beautifully constructed cinema it is and how well it stands up to the other Scorcese greats. Incidentally the movie has been back in the press this week as HBO announced that they are commissioning the guys behind the Wire to develop a show based around the same neighbourhoods and characters as the 2006 movie.. Anyway I also remembered that it was one of the few times, I liked a movie so much that I went home and wrote a review of sorts. Anyway I dug it up and here it is:

Review – The Departed (US. 2006) directed by Martin Scorsese.

By Tom Andrews

‘The Departed’ directed by Martin Scorsese is a Boston-set re-working of the acclaimed Hong Kong mob movie Infernal Affairs. Both films are about a promising Police cadet sent undercover into a local crime lord’s gang in order to discover who is feeding them confidential information. This story coincides and eventually clashes with the story of another promising young man, this time a gangster who signs on to join the Police planning to leak information back to the same crime boss. While Andre Lau and Alan Maks film was an exercise in minimalist cool in its dialogue and style and it’s taut plot and dynamic action scenes, Scorsese film is a different beast altogether. Taking the basic premise from the previous movie, The Departed invests considerable time in getting to know the neighbourhood, the Boston lives of its central characters. At first it feels a more sedate film in its depiction of working class Irish-Americana rather than the originals steel and glass modernity of Hong Kong mob life. But from the beginning it is made blatantly clear, for all the talk of honour and community these are cutthroat people. After Gangs of New York and The Aviator, in returning to the genre he knows best, Martin Scorsese has made his most consistent and best realised film in years. By relocating to Boston and away from New York, Scorsese also seems to have found his voice again as a filmmaker and ironically produced the most original and insightful example of the gangster genre in some time.

The Departed is an exercise in sustained and precise but at the same time visceral and sporadically shocking filmmaking. Considering the budget (a rumoured $140 million) and the ridiculous star cast, it is to the filmmakers credit that it in its setting and characterisation, The Departed is so evocative in its depiction of its particular microcosm of East Coast criminal life. There is no directors ego running amuck, no dramatic pivotal moments to be savoured, no Michael man heightened effect bombastic use of music and cutting. This film is instinctive, believable, and at once complex yet clear in it's characterisation, motives and depiction of cops, robbers and human beings. There is no clever-clever ‘who's good’, ‘who's bad’, "aren't we all a little of both?” subversive cinematic cliché. The Departed foregoes the twists and final reel reveals that make us think 'about the characters and ourselves in a new light'. There is only one star who can be accused of show-boating (Here's Johnny!!) but the director is smarter than that and you grow to realise in time that Jack Nicholson’s manic crime boss Frank Costello is just another person caught in the mess, flapping his wings and making noise in the hope that he might last a little longer, know a little more than any other poor bastard trying to make a living, make a name in this world. In this film the city is bigger than anyone and you can spend your life fighting against it but you will never beat it. You find yourself wondering was Nicholson in on this or was it inspired casting by Scorsese? Perhaps a little of both. Sadly, he's the only one who'll probably win an Oscar, and that would be criminal (no pun intended). Matt Damon, Martin Sheen and top of the list, in fact, top of any acting list I could muster up, Leonardo Di Caprio excel. The most brilliant dramatic moments, the 'Oscar moments' can only be found by really pulling apart the film in hindsight. In Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) and Billy Costigan (Di Caprio) are two young characters at once totally relatable, yet carrying out tasks, enduring ordeals more extreme than you and I can imagine. So beautifully sustained and absorbing is Di Caprio’s performance that you feel within half an hour you're totally on his side, yet never able to predict his next move. Scorsese’s story does not patronise the audience in its characterisation of these criminal archetypes. Like the superb Syriana earlier this year, The Departed presents a view of contemporary Western living where anyone can become a winner but everyone is screwed. It's the story of intelligent people fucking over intelligent people. Di Caprio convinces from the outset. I found myself, never stopping to marvel how such a fresh faced shrimp of a man can convince as a bona fide bad ass, in fact only stopping to think it at all until long afterwards. It's a film critic cliché but these characters are so rich because they are both a product of their environment, no more or less than their environment is a product of them. Character, the nature of these people dictates the plot not the other way round. Good cinematic thrillers often thrive on the gimmick of a new set up/concept, a new scenario the audience has never seen before, an ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation, 'what would you do?’ The Fugitive: 'Dr Richard Kimble was wrongly accused of killing his wife' etc.

The 'Departed' is an unholy mess of double-crosses and erratic violence. The twists and turns of the films plot are caused by the friction, the events set in motion by a series of characters not trying to kill, or save lives because of their psychological profile: The Megalomaniac crime boss who was never loved as a child etc; But because they are intelligent people trying to make a name, a crust. Their only allegiances are too themselves and as a result the only thing that can be taken for granted, is these 'smart guys' will fight like dogs to ensure their own survival. The American's make these stories better, because that story of each subsequent generations survival and rise up the socio-economic scale at any cost, IS the story of America.

The best movies, the best thrillers are where you CARE about the characters because they're your only link/hope/chance of getting to the bottom of what the hell is happening. But intensified because they know no more than you. It's a story but it's played as real life. Scorseses style, the costume, photography and again the acting are never intrusive. Again it's about excruciatingly maintained and sustained tension. The director removes all ego from the proceedings. His touch, his voice is never felt. David Lynch, Michael Haneke’s director of the superb Hidden; their trick is to call into question the very mechanics of storytelling, toy with the relationship of trust between the audience and the storyteller. They're winking (I said winking!) at the viewer, knowing from the start what the audience and often the characters do not. Scorsese lets the story play out at a pace dictated by the characters, his artistic touch/trick is to create a believable world and leave events to unfold themselves. To make his presence felt as little as possible.

Crucially this is what makes The Departed so compelling. Instinct and blind luck is all that separates good guys and bad guys or more crucially the living and the dead. The stakes are as high as they can be, you feel both sides could fail or die at any time. In its depiction of violence it is at once shocking in the casual brutality of these characters; yet it never lingers on the gore, it is never sensational, never glorifies. Scorsese film is all the more compelling because it doesn't focus on the violent act itself but that flip moment where it suddenly erupts. People are dispensable and disposable but we as the audience never become numb to it. Every shot fired, punch thrown comes as a shock. The events that unfold are generated by characters that are wholly selfish. They have no 'cause' to speak of, there are no grand 'themes' in Martin Scorsese's 'The Departed' and the film is all the more affecting for it. I've tried not to reveal plot details because I want you to see this film and judge it for yourself. You will either be taken in or you won't. And take what you will from this movie, make your own conclusions but I defy you not to at least be thoroughly entertained. Breathtaking cinema.