The Departed
- movie review
with
spoilers!
We've been meaning to see this movie since it
came out,
lousy time management prevented that - but now
it's out on DVD
so we ran by Blockbuster and rented a copy.
But first, we called Carraba's
Italian Restaurant to get in the mood.
They have those all over America - who knew?
As usual, I got the spaghetti and meatballs, she
got something I can't pronounce
called Tagliarini Picchi Pacchiu, which is fancy
talk for chicken & spaghetti.
It's a pretty good meal - we got ours to go. We
got salads and bread with this
great dipping sauce which consists of Extra Virgin
Olive Oil (goota be extra virgin) and Italian spices.
You wouldn't think bread dipped in olive oil
would taste very good, but this was killer.
So we're eating fine (for us) Italian food, watching
a mob movie.
I don't know that it was a great film - I had
some problems with it,
but sometimes I gotta see a movie 2-3 times to
figure out what happened.
I liked everyone I knew in the movie, that's rare.
Leonardo DiCaprio played the rookie cop who they
"busted" and sent to prison
so he could get inside Nicholson's crime family.
Matt Damon played another cop who was sent to
cop school by Nicholson, so you know he's dirty.
I don't like it when Damon's the bad guy. I liked
him in the "Bourne" movies and the "Oceans" movies,
but I hate to see him play the cornered rat.
Mark Wahlberg was super-obnoxious and I don't
think they ever explained why.
Every word out of his mouth was a "faggot,
pussy mother-effer," and that was
directed at the guys on his own team, the good
guys trying to bring down Jack.
I don't know how things woerk in Boston, but in
Oklahoma, if you start a conversation
that way with a guy who's not in a wheelchair
or blind, you've got a fight on your hands.
Martin Sheen was the police captain who could never quite get his hands on Jack.
Anthony Anderson had too small a part. This guy
is magic in whatever he does.
He can play a ruthless killer or a bonehead in
a light comedy.
Only Joe Pesci does it better.
Alec Baldwin - great in everything he does.
He put a beatdown on some schlub who flubbed
the placement of cameras.
They say he has a monster temper - did we get
to see some of it in this film?
Sidebar:
I got REAL pissed off writing this.
Usually reliable imdb.com
has turned whore on me.
They wouldn't let me type in the name of the
movie I wanted (getting the spelling on Pesci's name)
until the trailers for Babel and Man of the Year
played in full. Screw you, imdb.com
I hate it when a good and valuable web site turns
whore for a few extra dollars.
I think Marty shoots a ton of film, maybe 5-6
hours worth, and then he (and the ACE editor?)
goes back and chop what they can out of it, but
I think they made some errors.
Everything seemed fine to me, then all of a sudden
Leo's in a panic because of "all the heat"
that he's getting from Jack who was looking for
the rat - but they never showed that part.
We went from "all is fine" to the mad panic without
saying why.
Also, did we gain anything from the love triangle with the shrink?
We didn't even get a nude scene, so what was the point :)
Anyway, as the film moves on, the cops are trying and trying to find
out who the rat is
in their midst, (Damon) so, of course, they put him in charge of finding
his own rat ass.
It's a race to see who will be discovered first, Leo or Damon.
Towards the end, there seemed to be a giant, glaring error.
If you saw the film, tell me if you agree.
They're getting ready to bust Jack, so he calls his boy Damon at the
cop house
and screams into the phone, "Tell those cops
following me to stop it!"
Damon runs into the main room and tells the dispatcher to call the
tails back.
Sure enough, a minute later the two cars tailing him break away.
But there's a problem with that scene:
Leo's in the car when Jack makes his "No tail" demand.
He knows Jack is talking to a cop - who else could pull
the cops off him?
So when Leo gets back to the cop house, all he had to do was ask,
"Who gave the order to pull the tails off
Jack?" and he's got his rat.
But noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
Leo's not as smart as, say, Veronica Mars.
Leo can't figure out the simple clue - and he ends up dying for it.
When it comes on HBO (probably 2 years from now) I'll watch it again,
but if you
saw the movie, can you think of why Leo didn't make the very obvious
connection?
I'd still like for Marty to win Best Director,
but after one viewing, no way this was better than Goodfellas
or Casino.
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