What's with the ending? first gory, then unexplainable

Rating: 4/10 (15 January 2007)

I kind of enjoyed the steady buildup, the decent acting (Nicholson overdoes it as usual, Vera is surprisingly good, lots of subtlety and complexity to her play, would love to see her again in something else, Damon and diCaprio are as usual, Baldwin is the most solid of them all), before it fell apart like a bad re-enactment of Reservoir Dogs. There are just no clues that would enable you to see this ending coming. Plus, I am completely puzzled by Dignam's (Walhberg) motivation: is it just revenge for the killing of his boss? or was he also a rat? With a movie this long, you could have stretched the ending to show an ending where Damon's self-destructs and never recovers from the whole thing, even if he survives. Basically, the ending ruined it for me, turned a solid movie into an insult to moviegoers' intelligence, I will scream if it wins an Oscar...
Go see The Last King of Scotland for an Oscar-winning performance by Forest Whitaker and a moving and troubling movie.