2008 Woodie Awards
Scorcese finds success in remake
Movie Review: 'The Departed' 4 of 5 Stars
By: Anthony Barsanti
Issue date: 10/26/06 Section: LifeStyle
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For the director of "Mean Streets," "Goodfellas" and "Gangs of New York," organized crime is as American as apple pie. What separates his previous entries in the crime film log with his latest, "The Departed," is that his entire script was reworked from the 2002 Hong Kong film "Infernal Affairs."
With an ensemble cast of Goliath proportions, the new film is a welcome workout for some of Hollywood's finest, including Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio and, uh … oh yeah, the inimitable Jack Nicholson.
The audience is plunged right into the young adulthoods of the two main characters: Billy Costigan (DiCaprio) and Colin Sullivan (Damon) with quickly-coming and quickly-going scene fragments.
This sudden release of background information is prefaced by the coolly dominant voice of Nicholson, who plays Boston's Irish mafia boss Frank Costello.
"I don't want to be a product of my environment," Costello proclaims. "I want my environment to be a product of me."
Conversely, we see the development of Costigan into an undercover cop whose dedication is waning fast in light of his much-extended stay as one of Costello's trusted go-to men. Sullivan is then promoted to detective for the Massachussets State Police so he can presumably hunt down the man who runs Boston's streets, but Scorcese lets the audience in on a little secret: he is actually a mole working for Costello himself in order to find the rat he senses among his own.
Paying close attention to Costigan and Sullivan, they are both clearly uncomfortable with their situations and the direction their lives are headed. In a scene with Billy's psychiatrist Madolyn (Vera Farmiga), he voraciously insults her career as she refuses to prescribe him meds to cure his anxiety attacks. Minutes after he leaves, she brings him his prescription - and then of course, they hook up for a date.
Change is the hardest task for these two protagonists, constantly conflicted between doing bad things and acting out their truly good nature. For the avid filmgoer, it may add to one's experience to view this dilemma as it is accentuated further in the morally-centered Chinese original.
While both films highlight the vastly different studio systems in China and the United States, they are at the same time sharing the same human themes of conflict between moral and personal obligations.
Like the transference of Kurosawa's samurai classics into Leone's spaghetti westerns, Scorcese has Americanized an emerging thread in Eastern cinema - that of the law enforcement's inability to effectively combat organized crime.
With an ensemble cast of Goliath proportions, the new film is a welcome workout for some of Hollywood's finest, including Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio and, uh … oh yeah, the inimitable Jack Nicholson.
The audience is plunged right into the young adulthoods of the two main characters: Billy Costigan (DiCaprio) and Colin Sullivan (Damon) with quickly-coming and quickly-going scene fragments.
This sudden release of background information is prefaced by the coolly dominant voice of Nicholson, who plays Boston's Irish mafia boss Frank Costello.
"I don't want to be a product of my environment," Costello proclaims. "I want my environment to be a product of me."
Conversely, we see the development of Costigan into an undercover cop whose dedication is waning fast in light of his much-extended stay as one of Costello's trusted go-to men. Sullivan is then promoted to detective for the Massachussets State Police so he can presumably hunt down the man who runs Boston's streets, but Scorcese lets the audience in on a little secret: he is actually a mole working for Costello himself in order to find the rat he senses among his own.
Paying close attention to Costigan and Sullivan, they are both clearly uncomfortable with their situations and the direction their lives are headed. In a scene with Billy's psychiatrist Madolyn (Vera Farmiga), he voraciously insults her career as she refuses to prescribe him meds to cure his anxiety attacks. Minutes after he leaves, she brings him his prescription - and then of course, they hook up for a date.
Change is the hardest task for these two protagonists, constantly conflicted between doing bad things and acting out their truly good nature. For the avid filmgoer, it may add to one's experience to view this dilemma as it is accentuated further in the morally-centered Chinese original.
While both films highlight the vastly different studio systems in China and the United States, they are at the same time sharing the same human themes of conflict between moral and personal obligations.
Like the transference of Kurosawa's samurai classics into Leone's spaghetti westerns, Scorcese has Americanized an emerging thread in Eastern cinema - that of the law enforcement's inability to effectively combat organized crime.
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