Nov 18, 2006
I’ll preface this by saying that I find most current Hollywood movies overblown, indulgent, rehashes of the far superior originals. Bon vivant snob that I am, I usually go to indie flicks made on a $500,000 budgets. They tend to tell little stories, a slice of life, if you will. But once in awhile I cross the line and see something at the local multiplex. You think I’d have learned my lesson after Hollywoodland, but fuck, this is Scorsese!
I could not wait to see this movie. Martin Scorsese has made some of most kick-ass flicks of our generation, and he used the rocking 2002 Hong Kong film “Infernal Affairs” for the basis of “The Departed”. I loved “Infernal Affairs” and when my girlfriend warned that “The Departed” was getting so much hype that it was setting off her “spidey sense”, and that what she was sensing it was a stinker, I was undeterred.
The movie starts with classic Scorsese style as the camera zooms in on a rundown, urban luncheonette while The Stones “Gimme Shelter” rocks on the soundtrack. Fucking ‘ay, here we go!
I won’t give away much more because, not because I don’t want to spoil it for you, but rather because this movie is so fucking dull that I fell asleep… three times.
The first nod-off came somewhere around the second act. I had grown weary of trying to remember which one was Matt Damon and which was his prettier twin, Leonardo DiCaprio. I was woken out of that slumber by my girlfriend, who nudged me, and said, “hey, are you sleeping?”. “Of course not”, I replied, as I turned my attention back to the screen for what must have been another good fifteen minutes of watching Jack Nicholson do his Joker character all over again, but without the funny makeup. A few insult, obscenity laden jokes from Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin later, boredom again overtook me and my eyes got heavy. My second awakening came with a nudge to the ribs. I opened my eyes and realized I was staring at the ceiling of the theatre, my head resting on the back of my seat. “You’re snoring!”, said girlfriend. “I don’t snore!”, I indignantly retorted. It was useless to deny that I’d fallen asleep again, because I heard the couple behind me snickering. I don’t recall when my third doze occurred, but it must have been a fairly long one, because I woke up myself, and actually felt rather refreshed.
This is no “Casino” or “Taxi Driver”, and it’s certainly not even close to a “Good Fellas”. It’s more like “A Tale of Two Pretty Boys”. Where’s Harvey Keitel? Where’s Joe Pesce? I suppose if you’re gay or a woman, there is a lot of beefcake in the movie. From Nicholson to Sheen to Baldwin to Wahlberg, all ages are represented, so bring your Grammy and you Aunt Helen too! But, as DeNiro said to Peter Boyle in one of the many classic scenes in “Taxi Driver”, ‘I’ve got some bad ideas in my head’, he must have been projecting into the future and debating whether to see this stinker.
