Tries too hard to be clever & fails miserably

Rating: 5/10 (2 March 2007)

I rented this because of all the rave reviews, though I must say that after Goodfellas, I don't expect much from Scorsese. While it is watchable & not awful, there are at least 100 films in my queue that would have been more worthwhile. Almost every scene in this movie plays out like a rehash from another movie, so I was surprised to see that this was supposed to be a remake of Infernal Affairs (which I thought was quite good). Nothing in this movie rings true (a psychologist that dispenses drugs to patients after they've asked for them, a chief of police who hires a rat to find out who the rat in the department is, a graduate of the police academy who works his way up to the top in less than a year....the implausibilities are endless). The dialog & plot are quite contrived, the acting is always over the top (everyone has to use expletives all the time). The movie just spends too much time trying to be clever and not enough time developing any believable characters or plot. It's a sad commentary on the poor taste of the masses that a film this bad can get such a high rating.