Departed

Rating: 4/10 (8 March 2007)

Not much to commend on this movie! The original Hong Kong film was much much better. This movie was rambling, predictable, and at times reminded me of a college student film with its forced irony.
Okay, so Dicaprio did do an excellent job, and Sheen and Damon were okay but the acting of Nicholson was atrocious and Marky Mark has been much better in other things. His acting limitations were obvious in this film. What was the corpulent Baldwin even doing in this film, outside of the director giving a handout to a fellow down-on-his-luck lib, who shouldn't even have been living in the United States for the past six years? This film shouldn't have gotten all the good press that it has and it absolutely shouldn't have been nominated or won anything. And no, I am not bitter for wasting any money seeing this film because I was given a free copy of it and I actually looked forward to seeing it. Now that I have seen it, I wish it hadn't departed from the original movie as much as it did.
The whole thing of trying to incorporate the Boston bi-sexual crime-lord Whitey Bulger into the storyline with the Nicholson character was stupid and hit a bad note too since this mass murdering former male street hustler is still on the loose!