The Good & Bad Of 'The Departed'

Rating: 6/10 (22 February 2007)

THE GOOD - A big collection of well-known male actors headed by veteran Jack Nicholson give standout performances. Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon play guys who are both working both sides of the fence and the big suspense revolves around their characters and if will be found out. Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, ---- (the only female with many lines), Alec Baldwin, and Ray Winstone give superb support. My favorite was Winstone, a guy I'm familiar with from "Sexy Beast" and "The Proposition." Despite the length of this movie, it keeps your interest all the way. I never got more bored... BUT....
THE BAD - ....I did get tired of all the f-words. Usually I could care less about that, but over 250 of them? Sometimes it seemed like every sentence. It was ludicrous and after awhile, your senses seemed bombarded with it, such as too much action can numb you. It just wasn't necessary to have it said THAT many times, and by practically everybody in the film. That's my other main complaint: every character in here is a scumbag: an untrustworthy person who will sleep with anyone and lie to everyone. Baldwin's character, as an FBI director, was the most ridiculous of them all. Both of these faults are typical for a Martin Scorcese film. He's pathetic. Sorry, Marty, but not every person in the world is a low-life as you must be.
OVERALL - Nonethelss, to be fair, his movies - like this one - are usually interesting, just the sordid stuff done to excess. If you can put up with the latter, you'll like this film a lot.