Powerful story, magnificent performances, lousy ending

Rating: 5/10 (14 October 2006)

A stellar cast and a very good director nearly delivered on their promise of making an amazing movie.
A very good movie was ruined by a lame, almost idiotic ending. After spending 2 hours in a edge-of-your-seat gripping thriller with magnificent performances by Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio (yes, him too! who would've thought that he could turn out such a powerful and gritty performance?), Matt Daemon (his usual performance, not unlike his performance in "The Talented Mr. Ripley") and Mark Wahlberg, I expected the movie top live up to its potential right to the very end. It lived up to most of its potential through most of the movie except for the last 10-15 minutes.
Different movies treat violence and murder in different ways. Training Day (with Denzel Washington) does an incredible job of turning violence and murder into a powerful tool. In Departed, Martin Scorcese turns it into combination of gratuitous violence and otiose murder.
Martn Sheen and Alec Baldwin gave standard performances that did little to enrich the movie. They're extremely good actors who were horrendously underutilized.
What was Martin Scorcese thinking when he populated the film with a plethora of stars and when he filmed the ending? He either ran out of time or ran out of interest or ran out of thoughts. Or maybe he fell ill while filming the last part and designated an intern or a studio executive to finish it. In any case, at the end of the movie, you are left wondering "Huh? Why? What was the point?"