separating the pretenders from the contenders...

Rating: Null/10 (11 April 2007)

I kind of love films like The Departed. With its big name talent, long running time, and compelling (if somewhat hard to swallow) story it sends many wannabe film critics off to their pc to rave about using words like "classic", "brilliant", and even (gulp) "masterpiece". Let's start with the positive...the story, basically adapted from Infernal Affairs (which I purposely have not seen yet)is interesting and draws you into the film. Matt Damon and Mark Wohlberg were very good. Damon is so good he throws the film out of balance, since he is supposed to be the "mirror" of DeCaprios character. DeCaprio, alas, is not up to the task of holding up his end. He seems to be growing up (applause) but he has really grown little as an actor. Some of his scenes here were painful to watch: the "rat" scene with Nicholson (in which he was "acting" all over the place) and one scene where he pistol-whipped someone was only slightly better than Donald Trump vs. WWF. But don't blame Leo- the blame must fall directly on Scorcese for letting him get away with such an amateurish performance that even the academy (which is rarely too embarrassed for anything) was too embarrassed to nominate. And you can't say Scorcese doesn't know good acting from bad. It's too bad that he seems to have lost some of his passion for film-making, he was one of our very best edgy directors. This film looked like it could have been directed by just anyone. On the plus side I did remain interested until the end, unlike Gangs of New York and the Aviator,but on the minus side the last fifteen minutes of this film are so bad it makes you leave thinking the film is worse than it really is. It isn't a bad film, it's an over-hyped mediocre film done by big names. Just the kind of film that trips up...the pretenders.