Tripe

Rating: 1/10 (4 March 2007)

I'm still in shock that Martin Scorsese (who had such a hungry look on his face all through the preambles) got an Oscar for this senseless, blood-filled, curse-filled, demeaning, poorly acted and executed effort. I saw the ratings on IMDb and thought (after I had sat through the painful time it took me to watch this dreadful dumbed down copy of the Japanese original - Internal Affairs) that this is a joke, right? It must be whole truckloads of families of the many involved in this shambles rating the movie on IMDb. Anyone with even a knuckle-dragging IQ couldn't, couldn't, couldn't, admire this effort. Seriously.
I don't understand what Mark Wahlberg was doing in it. At all. Apart from insulting (the all male) team by calling them GIRLS. Oh what an insult. I should have walked then.
And the shrink, breaching every ethic in the book without a blink and a moronic dialogue burbling from her lips. One doesn't believe her for a second.
And Jack Nicholson right out of The Shining - and this performance continued even to Oscar night - Jack leering at one and all and showing a lot of teeth and just being POPULAR. Irish Mafia. Indeed. More like the court jester to Martin's king.
And on. I could write pages and pages but what's the point. There was no character development, no bonding of the chief and the mole (a very basic part of the original plot) downright plagiarism in parts. I was constantly confused between the characters played by the ingratiating Leonardo DiCaprio and the smarmy Matt Damon. They look/act/behave/hairdyed the very same. The movie paying public shouldn't have to work so hard at character identification with each scene.
A plot and better direction and a modicum of a screenplay would have helped. Appalling waste of time and money. 1 out of 10 because IMDb doesn't allow a minus or a zero. Avoid.