not a patch on INFERNAL AFFAIRS

Rating: 1/10 (31 December 2006)

this movie is completely inferior to Infernal Affairs on just about every level possible
IA anticipated an audience with a brain cell or two, and so explains during the title sequence what it takes this remake around 30 minutes or more to explain. repeat, during the *title sequence* we are given all of the information we need to know about the informant plants (which btw were realistically placed some considerable time in the past, rather than several months ago) and are then straight into the movie
scorsese takes this fabulous material and then dumbs it down to spoon feed it to a western audience. all of the sharp and intelligent dialogue of the original is gone in favour of your usual Hollywood 4 word expletives. every other word in this film is an F word, and they are mostly totally unnecessary. all of the stylish camera work of the original is lost, for example the ultra cool roof top meets. and to top it the casting and performances are dry and bad
nicholson gives us a performance which is no more than good old bottled vintage jack. here's jack doing an impression of a rat etc etc, yawn.
di caprio is good as usual but still doesn't nail the performance mostly because he doesn't physically suit the part. he just doesn't look tough enough for the challenge (as presented in the departed)
wahlberg on the other hand tough's it up to the Nth degree, and is just absolutely atrocious. this man is working in a high level intelligence department and he plays it like a street cop. it's a totally inappropriate display and really reveals his limitations as an actor
matt damon is just too plain, he is just totally unmemorable in this movie
for a director who used to be at the cutting edge of cinema, this is a fat and lazy remake of a lean and mean original movie/trilogy which i urge you strongly to see. time for scorsese to hit the gym and go back to basics
for people unaware of the original i'm sure they'll be blown away by the incredibly intricate plot in scorsese's departed. unfortunately what they probably won't know is that this is a dumb rehash of Infernal Affairs