movie-blog

Oooh - saw The Departed tonight... Martin Scorsese-directed, with Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon & Leonardo Di Caprio (interestingly, on the poster Leo gets first credit...)

We'd definitely been looking forward to it, and I'd heard mostly good reviews... so, perhaps my expectations were high - not usually a good thing for movie going! Overall, I thought the acting was very good, especially Di Caprio, though more & more I'm not sure if Jack Nicholson's becoming a parody of himself... I kept seeing flashes of The Joker coming through.

But that's being unfair - I do think it was mostly gripping, and I only started even thinking about looking at my watch about 10 minutes from the end. With all the double crossing and undercover investigations I did find myself getting confused at times as to who was going after whom and why, but think I perhaps understood it by the end. The love interest was a bit disjointed - wondering if perhaps some bits had been edited out to keep it to 2 1/2 hours.

I think I agree most with the New Yorker critic, David Denby, who says "The story is highly improbable, although Scorsese and Monahan keep the complicated goings on clear and taut, and the entire movie is acted with spirit and conviction... “The Departed” is murderous fun, but it’s too shallow to be the kind of movie that haunts your sleep." I certainly enjoyed it, and am glad we saw it on the big screen, but don't think it's a classic or one I'll be pondering over for more than the first 10 minutes of the dinner we had after the movie (and of course the few minutes it's taken me to write this entry.)