Wow! You people are easy to please.

Rating: 1/10 (17 October 2006)

I am a fan of Martin Scorsese but this movie sucks. This movie is a remake of a Hong Kong movie called "Internal Affairs." If you have never seen the original, then please do so because you will definitely appreciate how well the original was as opposed to this crap made by Scorsese.
Why do I hate "Departed?" First, Scorsese was an idiot putting Jack Nicholson as the crime boss because he is going to steal the whole damn movie. Nicholson is that talented. Plus, Scorsese gave too much part to the crime boss character. He should have been a tangential character with the real crux of the movie focused on Matt Damon and Di Caprio.
Second, Matt Damon's character was too one dimensional or there was no real complexity to his character. He was simply bad. In Internal Affairs, the bad cop was more complex. In that movie, you see a cop becoming annoyed by the crime boss who he sees as a threat to his future.
Third, there was more violence and sex in this movie than in Internal Affairs and I love gratuitous violence and sex in a movie so long as it is done properly. Scorsese just injected more sex and violence to cover up his terrible script adaption of an excellent film.
Fourth, the dialog was fine but again, it lacks intelligent discourse among the principal characters so I cannot say it was great writing. It was simply mediocre at best.
Fifth, and primary reason I hate this movie is that there is no real TENSION between the characters. Oh sure, Damon character wants to kill Di Caprio and vice a versa but there has to more to this than that. In the original, there was interaction between the bad cop and good cop, but you see that the bad cop is not so truly bad and therefore, the audience is torn. What I am trying to say is that there was a subtle buildup to the real tension in that movie which makes you really appreciative of the quality of that movie as oppose to this crap.
That being said, if you have never seen Internal Affairs, then you will like this movie. But if you are like myself and some others who have seen it and have seen this movie as well, then you will be disappointed. In fact, for those who decide to rent Internal Affairs, I can almost guarantee that you will like Internal Affairs much more than Departed. You will like Internal Affairs so much more that you will see what a junk Departed really is.