Scorsese is the master

Rating: 10/10 (24 March 2007)

I don't think I have to read every comment here to say what I have to say about this movie: it is the work of a master and that will make it always worth watching.
The very first time I saw a Martin Scorsese film, it was 'Mean Streets' and it gave me an anxiety attack. I thought I wouldn't be able to cope with all the adrenaline making me sit on the edge of my seat throughout that movie. Little did I know that any movie of the crime-suspense genre by Scorsese would make me feel this way and I had better get used to it.
Spielberg should bow and scrape every time he sees the master. And any actor with a brain would crawl through broken glass to get to work on a Scorsese picture.
The fact that this was a remake of a great Chinese film invites comparisons between the two. I think I will wait a good long while before I see the Chinese film and I will probably love it as much but with distance and time between the two stories.
Mark Wahlberg was blessed to get the role that he did in this film. He had to do little except act the part of tough native Bostonian. His somewhat important part in the story didn't really shock or amaze. He got recognition for his role simply by being involved in this wonderful production.
Can Martin Scorsese tell a story better than anyone on the effin planet or what? Can he recognize a humdinger of a story when he sees one better then any effin director alive today or what? Can he dig the diamonds out of the effin coal while working in effin politically correct effin Hollywood or what? Sorry, just still feeling the effin spirit of the effin movie's effin language, that's all.
There's a haze of dread that hangs over every scene like pollution. Does that come from the viewer's intuition or does the director, with the writers, the camera man or the lighting guy, put it there?
In almost every scene, there's the new lethal weapon (call it Lethal weapon XXVI): the cell phone. Every time one rings in someone's pocket on screen, you want to stand up and scream, 'Don't answer it!' The cell phone is the new character, deserving separate billing, getting 'offed' (thrown in water) or marked with blood (literally).
As in all crime plots, the black character is marked - you know he is going to get whacked, it's just a question of when.
Matt Damon and Leonardo di Caprio give equally powerful performances but Leo is the lucky guy who has the audience rooting for him. They look a bit alike and this cannot be an accident. They look like they SHOULD be related. In real life, in the non-screen world, Whitey Bulger and Billy Bulger are brothers and have been living a drama based in Boston that also pits good against evil (brothers, Whitey is a mobster on the lam, Billy was the president of the University of Massachusetts, both Irish, both Bostonian). There's a fabulous irony that somewhere, Whitey Bulger probably owns this DVD and watches it in a setting not unlike some of the film sets.
There has been talk that Costello, the Nicholson character, was loosely based on Whitey Bulger. That isn't important. The good/evil conflict is, and it is very Bulger family - like. Kudos to the screenwriter, William Monahan, who has more than a little knowledge of the Bulgers, having written a book about them, and knows how to write one quotable line after another. Bang, pow, wham! They just keep coming, making your wish you could carry those lines around in your pocket. 'I'm the guy who does his job. You must be the other guy.' Alec Baldwin and Leo have best lines - the dialogue just comes from them, as if they went home at night and wrote the lines themselves -but Nicholson has his share, too.
Nicholson is great but he plays, who else, the Irish American version of Jack Nicholson. Great nonetheless.
The dark scenes with the soundtrack of the slammin bangin Dropkick Murphy's music: everything is harmonious in this movie as long as we are in bars, alleys and dark, hidden places.
I have the tiniest criticsm of one plot point in the movie: who cares if your identity is erased from a computer? As everyone who ever has touched a computer knows by now, everything lost can be found again!
I also want to thank the Academy for recognizing this picture - what's with all the other crap coming out of Hollywood these days, anyway?