Nice build-up and terrible let-down

Rating: 5/10 (9 December 2006)

The post-Casino Scorsese is a director who has nothing more to prove and seems to be content with shooting big budgets that fall into line with big concessions.
The Departed feels much like an impersonal movie and the most Scorsese-like feature in it are the sudden bursts of violence. Violence clearly has an important status in Scorsese's filmography, were it only because it is not gratuitous violence but the cathartic display of the animal part in male characters. But at some point in the storytelling violence hurls the rest of The Departed to hit the rail. Too much, no longer meaning anything.
For me the big flaw in The Departed that makes it yet another over-bloated Scorsese flick is the fact he was compelled to deal with two intertwined story lines. Yet obviously the Scorsese hero is not the clean bland Sullivan (Matt Damon) but the grim edgy Costigan (DiCaprio). The Sullivan part has nothing to do in a Scorsese movie, it's a stereotypical part which only hijacks half the runtime from the real guy. Star egos? Matt Damon's agent negotiating to have equal time with DiCaprio? Anyway it's a sorry result.
What makes the great Scorsese's movies so great is the flow, the fact we have a voice-over that rushes us into the action, into the heart and soul of the characters. Here Sullivan is so uninteresting they had to put a prologue to set his character, and the screen time he gets only distracts the story-telling from gaining momentum with Costigan's inner struggle.
On the whole The Departed would be a good thriller (and a minor Scorsese stint) but the ending makes it a very disappointing one with its deus ex machina conclusion. Never thought Scorsese could be able to deliver such a pitiful executive-like busted mess of an ending. I felt it coming as the storyline was screeching with four-reels not to take the path of fatality, not making it to convert a nice ensemble piece to stay more with Costigan, our genuine tragic hero, the only one we truly care for.
UPDATE: I have now seen Infernal Affairs, the original Chinese movie, and the only points where the Americans have improved on the original material are 1/a better characterization for DiCaprio and Nicholson's parts 2/a slower rhythm more suitable to this story yet 50 min in excess (150' vs. 100') are twice too much. Infernal Affairs looks a bit rushed to fit in the 90-100' format and I have to admit the error of not insisting enough to flesh up the undercover cop was already the main problem in the original (we have very little time to feel the cop spent 10 years under cover) so The Departed has very little to be praised for. Even more so pumping up the Godfather part with the Nicholson impersonation proves detrimental, in the end, to the whole movie.