Please, just one more flashback/dream sequence

Rating: 3/10 (20 February 2010)

Please, just one more flashback/dream sequence.
The 400 that we had just weren't enough.
Oy! They just go on and on...
This is Scorsese with his heaviest hand ever.
An hour of plot with an extra hour of flashbacks makes watching this a grueling test of cinema endurance.
Every time I was pulled into the story and the characters - POP! - another flashback/dream sequence to stop the story cold and pull me out of the narrative.
Some nice character work by folks like the under-appreciated John Carroll Lynch and some spooky-cool visuals keep the movie from becoming the movie-going equivalent of root canal.
When it was all said and done I had wished that my going to the movie theater and forking over $12 was really just a dream sequence of the movie that is my life. But nope, I just checked my wallet. Scorsese's fingerprints are all over it. Again. Didn't I learn anything from The Departed?