Disappointing

Rating: 6/10 (11 April 2007)

As a big fan of both Martin Scorsese and the Hong Kong movie Infernal Affairs that The Departed is based on, I was looking forwards to this film. Sadly I've come away somewhat disappointed.
Taking it on its own strengths, it's a decent thriller with a good premise, but it really needed another pass on the script to tighten it up and (sad to say) stronger direction. I love Goodfellas, Casino, Taxi Driver, even The Last Temptation Of Christ. The Departed can't match the narrative or visual flair of those films.
The script is full of dead ends and wasted potential, and it doesn't help that the editing is choppy at best, downright sloppy at worst. It's almost as if (despite the two and a half hour running time) half the story and character development has been left on the cutting room floor.
The FBI connection never really goes anywhere, the pregnancy comes out of nowhere and goes straight back there, the love triangle never gives the pay-off you expect at the end (such as the identity of the baby's father), Costello's wife is a waste of space who doesn't add anything to the story, the envelope Billy gives Colin's wife is never used for anything, the mainland Chinese gang with their corrupt official in tow seem to have wandered in from Infernal Affairs 3 and are totally irrelevant to the plot, and when they get arrested (off-screen) a couple of scenes later, the target of the bust on Costello's gang just switches from the stolen micro-processors (which vanish into McGuffin Land almost without comment) to a drugs shipment (which appears from much the same place).
On the other hand, while Monahan and Scorsese find time for all these narrative cul de sacs, the characters and core storyline are poorly developed. Only Leonardo di Caprio's Billy is really fleshed out, and it's no coincidence that he comes out of the film with one of the strongest performances. The supporting cast in particular is woefully wasted, with actors of the calibre of Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone, Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg reduced to virtual cameos.
Where the film really suffers though is in comparison to Infernal Affairs. For example -

Matt Damon's Colin is one dimensional and uninteresting compared to the equivalent character that Andy Lau plays in IA.

Martin Sheen's Queenan doesn't have the same close relationship with Billy that Anthony Wong has with Tony Leung in IA (or the screen time to develop it), making his death far less moving and Billy's extreme emotional reaction to it somewhat bizarre.

Making Matt's girlfriend and Billy's shrink the same person was a good idea, but the relationship between Billy and the psychiatrist isn't given as much time to develop as it was in IA.

The numerous scenes that The Departed lifts almost verbatim from IA (from Queenan's death and the elevator shoot-out to the encounter at the movie theatre and the smashing of the cast on Billy's arm) mostly come across as pale imitations, lacking the emotion, tension and visual flair that cinematographer Christopher Doyle and directors Alan Mak and Andrew Lau brought to IA. It doesn't help that some of these scenes have been lifted entirely out of context and inserted into a different place in the story.

IA's intro is flashy and concise, getting you straight to the heart of the story in double quick time without leaving any room for confusion. By comparison, The Departed takes far too long to set up all the pieces at the start of the film and does it in a rather clunky manner, making the opening a little muddled and long-winded.

The constant texting and mobile phone calls in The Departed lack the tension of Tony Leung's morse code messages in IA.

And so on and so forth...

It's no surprise to me that fans of IA found The Departed a bit of a let down by comparison. It does surprise me to see so many Scorsese fans here waving the flag for what is in my opinion one of his weaker movies.
Is The Departed a bad movie? No. Is it a great movie? No. Is it one of Scorsese's best? Definitely not. Is it as good as Infernal Affairs? Not even close.