The Departed is a gripping adult thriller. Remaking the acclaimed Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs, Scorsese returns to his tough guy films, delivering his straightest genre work since Cape Fear. The conventions could be a letdown, were The Departed not such an expert entertainment.
The feel of a world spiralling apart is the palpable doom neglected by too many thrillers. For Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), it eventually results from his conflicting allegiances. Working undercover for the Boston PD, he joins the team of feared Irish gangster Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Costello also has his own informer in Sullivan (Matt Damon), who has taken a job as a cop.
Scorsese’s treatise on honour and trust has a sprawl at once epic and cohesive. It’s more accessible than The Black Dahlia, but it plays like a De Palma crime film in its pull-the-rug-out surprises. Seeing the movie with an audience is essential just for the treat of hearing the crowd react, startled.
Of course, if you’ve seen Infernal Affairs, The Departed’s impact is dulled. It’s deceitful how the film’s official publicity (even its credits) try to bury Infernal Affairs. Scorsese at least pays homage with Howard Shore’s Asian-influenced musical themes.
As a stand-alone film, it’s immensely satisfying—carried by the strength of its character relations and the pervasive threat of death. It’s only in failing to show that Costello is as villainous as everyone insists he is, that the film feels empty. Yet it’s also an interesting perspective for a film where “good” and “bad” are only status labels.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
Tobe Hooper’s 1974 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre stands among the greatest of all American independent films. Its inescapable madhouse atmosphere gets replaced with a base unpleasantness in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning—allegedly a prequel to the 2003 remake, but more accurately a remake of that film. Jonathan Liebesman shoots in a muted variation of the gold-light-on-black-canvas texture of Marcus Nispel’s ’03 film. Without that picture’s gloss, it’s an effort to return the power-tool cannibals to their grainy roots.
By fleshing out the backstory of Leatherface and the Hoyt family, the once inexplicable terror takes on a suggestion of tragedy. Not facing the potential, Liebesman can’t move his horror beyond a bullying fraudulence. “This is one of the assholes that fucked with you at school!” encourages foster parent Sheriff Hoyt (R. Lee Ermey) to his homicidal son. Yet the focus in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning isn’t on the confrontation of demons, moral reckoning or terror. It’s an unimaginative exercise in suffering. Here’s the thing: People who decry the existence of horror movies are speaking from a position of privilege. They don’t have to think about the outsider-empathy that isolated teens find in socially disfavoured movies and music. The importance kids take from Marilyn Manson, A Nightmare on Elm St. and The Hills Have Eyes remake (pop art that tells them they’re not alone) is a long way from the soulless carnage-orgy of this new Chainsaw Massacre and the Saw films.
Nothing in the film—not the gratuitous Apocalypse Now ceiling fan homage, not Leatherface’s agonizing reveal of his sewing class skills—bears understanding of the original, or establishes itself as a distinctive horror entry. You can’t honour a classic with a shrine made of garbage.
What’s your shrine made of? write: palermo@thecoast.ca
This article appears in Oct 12-18, 2006.
I have several questions about The Departed which I saw Saturday 10-14. I thought it was an excellent film in many ways. However there were several plot points that did not seem to make sense, or at least they didn’t make sense to me.1- Why did Madelyn turn up the volume on the CD that Costigan sent her so that Sullivan could hear it? Obviously if he was an informer for Costello she would be in danger if he knew she knew. She would be a threat to him.2- Why didn’t she turn him in.3- How did he know she wouldn’t and why didn’t he kill her?4- Why did Costigan send the CD only to Sullivan, which was intercepted by Madelyn. Why didn’t he send copies to the newpaper, TV, FBI, and multiple copies to everyone at the police department? Then he wouldn’t have had to meet with Sullivan to arrest him.5- Why meet on a rooftop where there is no easy escape and no witnesses if he is killed? Why not meet in the subway or a public place?6- What benefit was there any longer for the other Costello informant in the police department to kill Costigan and the Anthony Edwards character after Costello and his whole crew were dead?7- Why would Sullivan turn on Costello just because he saw a note that said he was an FBI informant? It seems obvious that it could have been incorrect information or that Costello could have informed the FBI of only things that would not be of much value to them or detriment to him and his crew. Maybe he was turning in rival mobs, etc. Why would Sullivan have his whole crew and him killed without checking out the many other explanations to this?8- Why would Costello who is made out to be this Zen Master of criminals, go forward in person to do a drug deal when he was informed that he was being followed and why would Costigan realize that one tail could have been pulled off and another put on when Costello himself did not realize that with all his experience?9- Why would two hunks like Sullivan and Costigan both fall in love with a woman like Madelyn who was far from beautiful and bordering on anorexic and also had a washed out personality?10- Why was Martin Sheen’s Boston accent so horribly bad? He had a great one in the Kennedy movie he was in years ago.11- Why would Costello not realize the Costigan was the rat in 2 seconds when it was so obvious? There was no rat, his crew were all the same for years, they a new kid joins who was a cop, got thrown in jail for a few months for assault and then all of a sudden there is a rat. Duh! Any moron could figure it out, why couldn’t he? Add to that Costigan leaving and “going home” repeatedly when told to stay.12- Was the guy who gave him the wrong address of 314 Wash really another undercover cop or did the police just say that to throw Costello off the track of Costigan?13- Did Dingum kill Sullivan because Dingum was a rat or was he a good cop and killed him to get back at Sullivan for being a rat?