subtle style, sensational craft

Rating: 10/10 (9 October 2006)

Scorcese as always covers violent, sensational topics while refusing to become a pulp sensationalist. He delivers the violence with no neat endings or beginnings, no neat love story. He puts forth violent human interaction honestly, messy, loose. Violence is never a neat event, no matter how intelligent or driven the perpetrators are. This movie feels like drugs, feels like desire, feels like all the things the Buddha tells us to leave behind. It is complete in that sense, that there is no desire left uncovered. There is the bad guy, wanting to be absolved, and the good guy in pain, wanting to feel safe. The only criticism i could offer is that Scorcese is the ultimate masculinist, leaving him still unaware and naive when it comes to the female gender. He has completed his study of males, maybe he needs to humble himself and delve in to the realm of the feminine.