The Departed Review

I finally got a chance to sit down and watch this movie. This movie is pretty well rounded. I'm not sure you could assemble a more all-star cast. Matt Damon playing a bad guy is interesting. And if you still have any doubts about Leonardo DiCaprio then I'm not sure which movie you watched. Leo has more than redeemed himself for Titanic. Mark Wahlberg was a nice touch, so was Martin Sheen and Alec Baldwin. Jack Nicholson performs amazingly, just as expected. Maybe too many stars...

The beginning starts out a bit shaky, definitely could use improvement. The first couple scenes are a bit hard to follow, but make sense once you know the characters. The plot is a bit long, Scorsese could have cut out a little bit and still pulled in under the 2hr mark. I noticed a couple interesting camera scenes, but overall nothing that was outstanding or impressive.

There are a TON of mistakes, noticed a boom mic, mistaken factual information, geography problems, tons and tons of revealing mistakes (papers in different spots, props in different places, gun shot wounds, etc) A lot of it is very noticeable and its detrimental to the value of the movie. Some of it only people from around Boston would notice, still i expect more from a pro like Scorsese.

A couple plot problems i had: Theres no way Sullivan would have gotten away with the events at the end of the movie. He wiped the gun, but the investigation would have found the various flaws in Sullivan's description of what happened. But it doesnt really affect the plot, as Wahlberg's character still would have been able to shoot Sullivan. It makes no sense why Frank would have the other insider in the police. Also the "everybody dies/just deserts" ending is a definite COP OUT....

I also didnt like the ton of profanity, and it takes a lot of "fuck"s to get me to say that. When a movie says fuck just to say fuck as many times as it can, gets to be just vulgar. Some instances dont need profanity. It normally doesnt bug me unless theres just a ton of it in the movie...

I'll admit, I was apprehensive about seeing this movie because of its sweep at the Academy Awards...but it was a great movie. Though I DEFINITELY dont believe this movie should have won 4 Oscars...a lot of great movies got snubbed at that Academy Awards....but then again the Oscars isnt the benchmark for great movies.

The more and more I analyze this movie the less and less I think of it, so We'll just leave it at that. (probably my longest review as of yet...)