Stay until the credits roll, fans of the original

Rating: 10/10 (7 October 2006)

Sometimes you see a movie in which everybody is so thrilled to be putting on this show, that their sheer joy in entertaining you explodes from the screen and burrows into the audience's collective imagination. You can tell that these actors, these filmmakers, everybody involved in this production, you can tell they were busting at the seams with excitement. Nobody was ashamed of their influences here; Jack Nicholson's character is a giddy rebirth of Johnny Friendly from ON THE WATERFRONT, oozing menace and self-entitlement. William Monahan takes Siu Fai Mak's excellent script and bumps up the humor, the tragedy...yeah, and a whole lot of Boston slang.
There's a sheen of Hollywood artifice that some might decry but that I think contributes to the thrill of the show; after all, we know all these guys are playing make-believe anyway, right? Who cares if a soundstage in New York is subbing for a bachelor loft with a view of a Boston landmark? Point is, this movie has so much going for it, even what it doesn't have going for it works for it anyway.
Fans of the Hong Kong original will immediately note the difference in endings, and I'm still deliberating this one. !!!! SPOILER !!!! Damon getting popped in the end is, supposedly, the "right" thing. However, it means that his lover betrayed him, or did she? See, what ambiguity it robs from the original's ending it adds in a new shade.
Does this mark the return of Scorcese? It certainly is a very good sign, if it is a sign, of things to come. I for one hope this isn't the last kind of this film he does. He knows how to make these toughs work on screen...it's a rare gift.