A rip-off of "infernal Affairs". An excellent movie nevertheless.

Rating: 8/10 (20 January 2007)

"The Departed" is a remake of a 2002 Chinese film entitled "Infernal Affairs". The main and almost only difference is the exceptional heavy-weight Hollywood cast that has been thrown into Scorsese's version. DiCaprio's performance is excellent (as always), but Matt Damon's somehow falls short of his usual standard. The character played by Nicholson has a bigger and more eccentric role in this version as compared to the Chinese version, which does not come as a surprise considering that it is Jack doing his thing in his own way. Nevertheless, this time Nicholson does not steal the film like he's done in previous times. Considering all the big names in the cast, and if I could go back in time and change something about this film, it would be the choice of Damon as the mole in the police dept. I think that role required either a different approach or an actor with more personality so that the public could identify more with the character, like in the case of DiCaprio's. After all, the whole point of the movie is the tension created by the possibility that either one of those two characters is going to be caught. The film is excellent but I can't give more than 8 out of 10 to it considering that in some scenes it is a frame-by-frame rip-off of "Infernal Affairs". If you can watch any of the two versions at any given time, I would recommend to watch the original version first because In my opinion it comes across as the most honest of the two.