terrible overacting, heartless

Rating: 4/10 (2 December 2006)

orlando jones once said: "Someone I met years ago explained to me the difference between a personality and an actor, a personality being Eddie Murphy or Roseanne Barr, and an actor being Morgan Freeman and Alfre Woodard or Marlon Brando. And in the shrinking world of sound bites, the Internet, and other mass media, there were going to be fewer actors and more personalities." (From PopMatters interview, 2000)
if you apply this to "the departed", you'll see that there are hardly any actors in this soulless and empty piece of Hollywood entertainment.
granted, the craftsmanship of scorsese is evident and made me sit through the 140 minutes of this film.
is it a masterpiece as some here said? definitely not! art is supposed to make you think or feel on a higher level. this film does nothing of the kind. it leaves you empty because it is without any heart or soul.
as for the acting: dicaprio's performance was just embarrassing. terrible overacting! i couldn't believe it.
matt damon was as he usually is. this guy just cannot act. period. he's a good-looking "personality", but not an actor by any stretch. he often compensates by overacting.
same goes for wahlberg. emberassing overacting. who hired that guy?
sheen was decent. he is an actor.
i was surprised by jack nicholson, however. he has never really been an actor but a very interesting personality. but there are scenes in this film where he actually acts well! seems he took some acting lessons in his old days.
the plot was very convoluted in the setup but got more streamlined in later parts.
this was not a good movie by any means and certainly no masterpiece. just another piece of empty, soul- and heartless Hollywood "entertainment"
4 out of 10 for scorsese's craftsmanship.