Not Martin Scorsese's best film; lame towards end & unnecessary profanity as filler

Rating: 3/10 (8 October 2006)

(Minor spoilers ahead, but nothing crucial)
First off, I admire Martin Scorsese for his immense talent. I consider Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy his very best films, in terms of profound psychological affection as the result of masterly directing from the top-notch quality screenplays coupled with stellar actors, production design & cinematography.
I enjoyed Martin's previous films Gangs of New York and The Aviator, despite the flaws. I went to the movies to see this film and was very let down by the problems laid out below:
1) Way too much profanity and vulgarity! I could have expected this as the movie is a gangster genre. Filler language become obvious whenever actors Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlburg speak dialogues.
Don't get me wrong, profanity & vulgarity can be artful if written with the sharp-fine barb and spoken with mastered oratory as an actor embody the in-the-character expression with conviction. For example, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown and Full Metal Jacket. This film is right up there with The Last Detail, Scarface, Good Will Hunting and Made as the most colorlessly profane movies of all time that serve to irritate like fingernails scratching the blackboard from top to bottom in 45 degree angle. Filmmakers and screenwriters who over-utilize the F-word and demeaningly vulgar racial & sexual references to the extreme shoot their feet when it turns out nothing more than filler language that pad the mediocrely written & vapid screenplays that translate into even more annoying and vapid movies.
2) Bad acting across the board by Alec Baldwin & Marky Mark. Their so-called "acting" in screaming, cussing and assaulting are so over the top it's laughable. Not convincing at all.
3) The first hour is well-paced and tense. After that it went downhill in tedium with awful love triangle that go nowhere and is a plot device to pad the length. The action and twists towards the ending is stretching the reality to the point of having to suspend disbelief. Ludicrously plotted with marginal execution. At least clamshell cell phones have the starring role as the ingeniously written plot device to engineer the suspense. Alfred Hitchcock would have liked that idea if he were alive.
4) Jack sure can act like an evil mobster...at least in the first hour. Again, after that it went downhill with him acting like a clown fool and a prankster. Way to go for being out of character that pull the viewers out of the filmic world and see that Jack is just that -- Jack at his silliest in self-parody.
5) Final closing shot is unintentionally laughable for being so unsubtle Marty thought we the audience patrons are too dumb to get it so he stuck it in there. Even though the character in question seem to afford a very expensive luxury condo with no pests at all. Awfully stupid ending tied up in ludicrously complex double-triple-fourth crossing.
I enjoy Leonardo DiCaprio's role as an undercover mole, he's right for the movie. However, Matt Damon is woefully miscast that made him unconvincing as the first-rate traitor. That actress who play a police psychiatrist is awful in failure to be convincing -- subpar acting trying to look too sweet and cute in angelic form amidst the carnage of brutal assaults & grisly mob murders. Martin Sheen could have done more, but he seemed too timid and meek of a police chief who meets the tragic fate -- on the setting of a television police drama.
Fine cinematography and production design, but they should have tightened the pacing by cutting out the fat to make a lean & mean film. It drag on at times and whenever it drags they thrown in the train of F-bombs which is incredibly annoying after ten seconds.
Not Martin Scorsese's best or better film. Apparently this is a re-make of the acclaimed Hong Kong film which I regret having never heard of but will make time to watch to judge that the original may be better in tightly edited pacing and high-octane suspense.
** 1/2