over-hyped

Rating: 4/10 (27 February 2007)

I confess from the start that I did not want to see The Departed. Gangster movies with their gratuitous violence, profanity laced dialogue and sordid characters have little appeal for me. I find them, almost always, tedious and unsettling, the exception being movies like the Godfather series which were able to transcend the genre. However I told my son I would see the movie if it won the Oscar for best picture which, to my regret, it did. A promise is a promise so I sat through the entire movie even though I wanted to leave many times. Setting aside my ingrained distaste for movies of this sort and trying to look at the film objectively, I would argue that it fails on many critical levels. The acting performances range from adequate to indifferent. Jack Nicholson plays his usual Jack Nicholson role which is good or bad depending on whether or not you like Jack Nicholson. Matt Damon's character is bland and motiveless. Mark Walhberg's character is just bizarre. Leonard DiCaprio's performance is probably the best but that's not saying much. The script never calls for any real character development so the actors basically have one mood and that's it for the rest of the show. All we have throughout the movie is people swearing at each other, menacing other people or being menaced. The whole set up and execution of the plot, the obligatory love affair, the violence and the twist at the end is so just so improbable as to be ludicrous. At the other end of the spectrum in the Academy Awards Best Picture nominees was Little Miss Sunshine and though this movie had its flaws it had, at least, an original idea which, of course, never appeals to Academy voters. It was intelligent and infinitely more entertaining than The Departed which does not even rise to the top when compared to great gangster movies like The Goodfellas, Get Shorty, Snatch, Scarface etc. If you like gangster movies you will probably enjoy The Departed, even though I doubt you will find the hype justified. If you don't like gangster shows there is certainly nothing here to make you change your mind.