Familiar And Overlong But Exciting Undercover Cop Thriller With Fantastic Ensemble

Rating: 5/10 (30 August 2010)

Desperate to bring down local kingpin Frank Costello, the Boston Police Department convinces a newly graduated officer with a chequered past to go undercover and join Frank's mob. However, Frank has his own agents working for the good guys ...
This fast-moving crime melodrama is pretty good fun but for me it's overly familiar Scorsese territory, with its wiseguys, stoolies, religious backdrop, failed romance and general male identity crises. It was a big hit for him, both financially and perhaps more importantly in that he finally won an Oscar after five nominations. But take it from me - most of those previous nominations were for better movies, and some of his best work wasn't even nominated (Taxi Driver, The King Of Comedy). Don't get me wrong though, there's a lot to enjoy in this flick and in some ways it is quite different - there's much more of a focus on plotting and intrigue, there's Crazy Jack doing his inimitable thing and the big ensemble of heavyweights are all clearly enjoying themselves (Wahlberg wins the Joe Pesci gratuitous swearing award). I liked Damon best as the increasingly confused Judas with a lucky streak a mile wide, and the plot has lots of interesting little quirks, such as the inference that Costigan (and not Sullivan) is the father of Madolyn's child. It goes for the standard Hamlet ending, but in an unexpected way and the final shot of the rat is an amusing metaphor. I've never been particularly enamoured of Scorsese's constant fascination with the link between machismo and male identity - I guess it's an Italian-American thing - but when the picture gets into more universal territory, like the scene in the restaurant where Frank is starting to crack under the pressure of knowing there's a traitor in his midst, it starts to come alive. The movie has an unusual history - it's based on the excellent 2002 Cantonese flick Mou Gaan Dou, aka Internal Affairs (and not to be confused with the 1990 Mike Figgis film of the same name). Aren't the Academy Awards strange ? When Scorsese makes a courageous and deeply personal piece like The Last Temptation Of Christ he loses (to Barry Levinson), but when he does a (slightly inferior) remake of a pulp fiction Hong Kong action flick he wins. Hey, maybe there's a rat in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.