Good, but not as great as the original

Rating: 7/10 (7 October 2006)

Infernal Affairs is such a fantastic movie, and I sort of groaned at first when I heard it was going to be REMADE in the US rather than just RELEASED here (theatrically, that is).
Then I found out Scorsese was directing and that got me interested.
So now, four years after the original, it's finally here. And it's very good, maybe even great - though I'll need to see it again to pass that judgment. In a way, that's really saying something right there because with the original my eyes were glued to the screen (which was only a six inch portable DVD player - pretty far from the 50 foot screen I saw The Departed on yesterday) and my spirit was soaring from the opening credits. The Departed lacks the breathtakingly beautiful flowing movement (camera work, editing, nuanced physicality of lead actors) of Infernal Affairs and replaces all this with grim, violent intensity. It's a very American, very Scorsese remake. There are great moments when it creates it own powerful, visceral sense of the pain that fills its characters. The Departed puts its focus much more on the painful consequences of lying to people and on the destruction that people who are lairs by necessity (because they have so much to hide) wreak upon their world. You can surely see the social/political message implicit in this - but sometimes I want a movie to be a sweeping emotional experience and not try to engage my political conscience.