The Good Fellas in Boston - Episode 4

Rating: 5/10 (11 November 2007)

It's more from the boy who gave you Good fellas, Casino (Good Fellas goes to Vegas) The Gangs of New York (The Good Fellas go Back in Time) with his latest of the series, The Departed (Good Fellas in Boston). Yes it's more illegal mayhem featuring ruthless mob bosses, cold blooded killers, well edited acts of violence and murder serenaded with nostalgic pop music.
All of these films are variations in one form or another from Martin Scorsese's highly original and brilliant first color film Mean Streets. By the end of the 80's he was probably America's finest active director with a resume that included two classics, Taxi Driver and the remarkable Raging Bull. Good Fellas was a well made update of Mean Streets. A kind of Mean Streets grows-up with a bigger budget and glossier look. Still it lacked the grittiness and energy of Streets. Casino had Pesci and Di Nero taking the same act to Vegas. It was back to New York and a century earlier with Gangs. This time it was Daniel Day Lewis and Leonard DiCaprio doing Bobby and Joe.
Now we have The Departed with a hammy Jack Nicholson and Leonard DiCaprio doing a full court Brando in this tale about police corruption and the Irish Mafia in Boston. The same Scorcese themes and devices (corruption and betrayal, vulgarity and violence) are nuanced to fit the Boston Irish stereotype. Bad accents abound with Martin Sheen's inebriated Ted Kennedy taking the honor as best of the worst. The rest of the actors displaying "Irish tempers" are uniformly bad. They rank with Day-Lewis unintentionally comic performance in Gangs.
So if you like the series (the Oscar crowd certainly did) you'll get more of the same in The Departed. Marty won't disappoint. He's a celebrity icon now but I liked him much better when he was an artist.