Leaving the building...

Rating: 6/10 (28 April 2008)

Scorcese's first comment on his old pet theme, gangsters and their world, for some time and the question is can the veteran director still deliver in the grand style of, say "Goodfellas" and "Casino". For me however, this movie doesn't hit the mark of its illustrious predecessors and seems to me to lack that particular "Scorcese touch", if anything playing out like any other contemporary mob thriller you can see on TV as well as on the big screen. Of course it's distinguished by A-List actors but none of them quite delivers that knockout punch in terms of performance. De Caprio is certainly edgy and committed in his central role as the inside man, the left-hand to Ray Winstone's surprisingly almost anonymous right-hand man to mob leader Jack Nicholson, whilst the great ham himself (sorry, I'm not a fan) is kept mostly in check, keeping his eye-rolling and exaggerated speechifying more or less under control, even if Scorcese does hand him an unnecessary "Here's Johnny" / "I didn't ask" moment with a "This ain't reality TV" crack. Matt Damon, even though more associated with heroic male lead parts (c.f. Jason Bourne) has played baddies before (most memorably in "The Talented Mr Ripley"), and convinces as Nicholson's man on the inside, but in the end I found this and the other considerable star-power on display (Wahlberg, Sheen, Baldwin et. al.) distracting from the drama. Vera Farmiga is competent, no more than that, as the love interest to both Damon and DeCaprio in an underwritten and unbelievable role as the police shrink. In a movie where the four main leads are not what they seem and engaging in different ways in deception and deceit, be it on a large scale (De Caprio, Damon and allegedly Nicholson) or a strictly personal scale (Farmiga), I think a clearer more believable narrative would have improved matters. The action set pieces are okay and rightly rooted in reality but some of the events are implausible to say the least (Martin Sheen as a senior investigator with the police gets unceremoniously thrown off a high rise building, then everybody else more or less gets shot just before the final reel where avenging angel Wahlberg, cleans up affairs by taking out in-the-clear Damon to bring about some degree of closure to the carnage which has gone on before), but I was frustrated at plot holes which threw me off-track and were not I believe fully resolved or compensated for dramatically. And just what place vintage early 70's music by the likes of the Stones (okay, we know why they had two tracks included - obviously Marty isn't above pitching for a gig with prospective employers), Lennon, the Beach Boys and even Badfinger have with an up to the minute contemporary thriller, is anyone's guess, great tracks as they are. All in all a frustrating watch and proof to me that the Academy can be beholden to sympathy and sentimentality in rewarding perseverance over the individual accomplishment of the job in hand. Okay, so maybe Scorcese's Oscar could be taken as a sop for the unrewarded "Taxi Driver", "Raging Bull", the afore-mentioned "Goodfellas" and "Casino", not forgetting my own favourite "New York New York", - but I thought that's what lifetime achievement awards were for...!