NOT the film Scorcese should have won an Oscar for

Rating: 5/10 (20 October 2019)

I'll join in the minority opinion dissenting from appreciation of this overdone, absurdly exaggerated mob-cop melodrama. Though I certainly can appreciate all the talent involved here-- I mean, what a cast, Nicholson, DiCaprio, Damon, etc.-- and Scorcese directing (who should have won the Oscar for his masterpiece, Goodfellas) the ridiculous plot (remake of one of the commonly ridiculous Hong Kong cop genre films) is, frankly, an insult to the intelligence, and to watch it attempt to justify itself with ever more absurd plot points--Sheen's character falls off the roof and lands right on top of another character, I mean, PLEASE!!--was tedious, and even painful to watch at times. I give it the stars just for the effort of particularly the actors involved, but the normally extremely talented Scorcese should simply have taken the basic plot and had it rewritten to a more terse, realistic thriller (something Robert Redford and his director Sidney Pollock did with Three Days of The Condor, which came from a book called Six Days of Condor and had much more exaggerated action scenes in it). Hopefully, Scorcese can put out another masterpiece before he's done and then finally be rewarded for the level of work that he's so obviously capable of.