A modern day Shakespearian tragedy

Rating: 9/10 (14 October 2006)

If you didn't know any better, you would have thought that this story was written by Shakespeare. I mean it has everything: complex characters, heavy accents (Bostonian) that are near incomprehensible, plenty of language (oh yes, Shakespeare was quite vulgar for his time), sex, witty comedy relief, and an extremely high body count (along with gallons of blood). What starts as a simple undercover job turns into a deadly cat and mouse chase between the two rats (DiCaprio and Damon) to discover the identity of each other without getting killed in the process. Jack Nicholson is, as always, superb and delightfully evil as the vicious mob boss who, like everyone else in the film, has something big to hide other than the fact that he is a mobster. Minor roles of Alec Baldwin and Martin Sheen almost steal the show with their off beat humor and sheer presence (respectively). Fair warning, this film has some very rough cursing and very graphic mob violence and is definitely not for anyone below 17. No nudity, surprising for a Scorsese film, but he makes it up with plenty of graphic sex talk (mostly from Nicholson). An excellent film.