Breath-taking, the return of the original Scorcesse.

Rating: 9/10 (10 December 2006)

It has been a long time, a very long time since we last saw a powerful movie by the revered Martin Scorcesse. Many of us movie goers had been missing the director that made the streets of New York part of Hollywood's history. Amazingly enough, Martin doesn't have Robert de Niro to make him another incredible movie but instead he chose another living legend: Jack Nicholson. After he made sure he had the experienced multiple Oscar winning actor, he managed to secure an all-star cast also composed by Alec Baldwin who apparently has improved his craft with the years. However, it would be unfair not to include Leonardo DiCaprio as the one character that pulls everything together, making the movie worthy of an Academy Award Nomination for Best Picture of the Year. Di Caprio's lands his best role yet and takes it to another dimension. This is a breakthrough performance of a young Hollywood talent that many people doubted after his innocent and naive role in the very popular Titanic movie. Scorcesse goes back to basics, displaying raw characters with clear ambitions in an underground world filled with violence, greed and politics. This is a movie about deception, about loyalty and how it can be broken when you feel surrounded and with no escape. The many twists and turns makes for a unpredictable movie that delivers surprises left and right. The tension of a particular scene where Leo Di Caprio and Matt Damon face each other through a cell phone is the climax of a great movie.
Maybe the only flaw is that the movie lacks a message people could relate to, violence is plentiful and sometimes too much.
Still a great movie. A 9 out of 10.