The Departed - hard to like.

Rating: 3/10 (31 October 2006)

It was with no little trepidation that I arrived to see this latest offering from Scorsese. There are few directors in his class in modern cinema and he is certainly one you would watch directing traffic, but I can only report that this film is massively disappointing. A strong ensemble cast promised much and almost to a man they delivered massively, and here I think lies the clue to this Curate's egg. It occurred to me that Jack Nicholson delivers a performance that was at best ill-conceived and at worst massively self-indulgent to the detriment of the film. As a result the Nicholson character is a shocking turn off, maybe only rivalled by Ray Winstone's leaden Mr French. The remainder of the cast deliver strong performances, actually exquisite in the case of Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin, perhaps this is an attempt to distance themselves from a flaccid core? For me Leonardo Di Caprio and Matt Damon are serviceable as the central characters (which for Di Caprio is as good as it gets but that is possibly a matter of personal taste) but this doesn't detract from what is ultimately an underwhelming film. Its worth mentioning that the level of disappointment I felt at this film was such that I had to go and watch it again to confirm that I hadn't grossly mis-read the film, sadly the second viewing simply confirmed my lack of satisfaction.