Long ago and far away...

Rating: 5/10 (29 June 2007)

It is sad that some filmmakers are forgotten in their prime when it comes the time to give out awards. If they are lucky as Robert Altman, they receive a lifetime achievement award, but it is embarrassing when they get one prize as a kind of consolation reward, after being ignored for their best works. This is the case with Martin Scorsese who finally won the Best Director Academy Award for this boring and sanitized re-telling of "Infernal Affairs", a 2002 Chinese violence film. One person though is outstanding, and was ignored at prize time: Leonardo DiCaprio as the young man trapped inside the bad guys' playground. I give it five stars because Scorsese has not lost his know-how, but the great stories of yesteryear, the innovative techniques of the past are not here. This is unfortunately mainstream cinema by a once-unconventional director. Editor Thelma Schoonmaker tries hard, but even she cannot equal her work in "Raging Bull." What we have is a re-cycling of Scorsese's aptitudes, in function of a tiresome and mean story for the macho man who ask his macho woman for a beer while he watches a football game (or this movie.) I at least do not need this kind of stories today (unless they have a sense of humor, as the Chinese do, or the characters are treated as children, as in Hawks' "Scarface".) Do yourself a favor and plan a retrospective of Scorsese's best at home, renting "Mean Streets", "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore", "Taxi Driver", "Raging Bull", "After Hours", "The King of Comedy", "Goodfellas", "The Age of Innocence" and "Bringing Out the Dead."