The Departed (2006) [DVD]

The Departed is a film that proves at 69 years old Jack Nicholson can still play a fantastic villain, at 63 Martin Scorsese can still make a great gangster film and at 36 Matt Damon still has a lot to learn about acting.

Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Sullivan (Matt Damon) are cops - one is straight and working undercover for the cops, the other is bent and working for a local crime gang - essentially the two characters are alter egos of themselves, both from South Boston and of Irish descent. They are tied together by ageing crimelord Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), who is looking to paint the city crimson as the sun goes down on his career, and police chief Oliver Queenan (Martin Sheen), looking for that big arrest which will etch his name into the history books.

Boston-born screenwriter William Monahan (Kingdom Of Heaven) delivers a gritty and violent script that sits uneasily on the moral conscience, based loosely on a Hong Kong gangster film series known collectively as "Wu jian dao" (Infernal Affairs) but using Boston (Massachusetts) as the backdrop.

Of the vast acting talent on display, Nicholson in particular delivers his dialogue with gusto and a sharpness reminiscent of his earlier days, effectively overshadowing his younger colleagues chiefly Damon who, despite spending time with the Massachusetts state troopers in research of his role, fails to impress. This is in no small part due to the script, which for all its complexity fails to develop key characters effectively. Scorsese is also a victim of his own success, by having such high profile actors at his disposal he struggles to keep afloat a raft laden with creative talent and conflicting styles.

After five oscar nominations for direction one would hope that eventually his talents would be duly recognised with an actual oscar. The long tracking shots and use of light are typical Scorsese yet the direction bears little ambition, especially when compared to his other cinematic triumphs like Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and The Aviator. Scenes are reminiscent of those in Heat and Serpico and the tone of trust and betrayal harken back to the Goodfella's but there is no denying this film is far from formulaic and does enough to keep the viewer engaged.

The sharp script and acting showcase should see the film perform well at the box office but this is far from being Scorsese' finest work!

First time round I found The Departed a disappointingly average film, but on a second viewing it's clear I misjudged it: it really is a quite bad one. Scorsese's weaknesses as a storyteller have often been discussed, but he's not helped here by a remarkably poor and horrendously overpopulated script from the usually much more interesting William Monahan that at once dumbs down the original Infernal Affairs and simultaneously overcomplicates the storytelling. For all the additional characters and running time there's no grander design at work here to compensate. It may strain for grand opera but it simply comes across as off-key light operetta sung by people with sore throats.

The chief problem is the film's funereal pacing, which the clumsy editing and energetic camerawork increasingly fail to hide. The film takes forever to set up its plot - the film is half over before Matt Damon's undercover mobster who has worked his way into a Boston police task force is ordered to find himself - but never compensates by fleshing out the characters or adding any substance to the story. If anything, underneath all the bloat and bombast the film has seriously dumbed down the Infernal Affairs trilogy's underlying themes of identity, role playing and the need to find some kind of redemption in a world that requires you to be corrupt in order to live with yourself in some kind of peace. Instead, it's become a star vehicle in the worst sense of the phrase, where the central duo of police mole in the underworld and underworld mole in the police are effectively sidelined for so much of the picture that they almost become bit players.

Yet while we get seemingly endless and often incredibly long scenes of Jack Nicholson grandstanding, doing rat impersonations, waving sex toys around, insulting priests and generally impersonating Long John Silver as the cardboard mob moss, they really tell us nothing about either the character or the story. For all the constant repetition of his catchphrase "The point is," there simply is no point to most of these scenes other than padding out a minor supporting character (who in the original had no particular personal relationship with either main character) enough to attract an A-list actor and in the process unbalancing the film so much that he actually becomes the leading role. Scorsese has always shown a tendency to relentlessly hammer home the same point over and over again at great length despite making it perfectly well early in the film, and too many of Nicholson's scenes seem to be like hearing exactly the same joke very slightly paraphrased over and over and over again.

Unfortunately the problem isn't limited to Nicholson's resolutely unmenacing cartoonish villain. While both Leonardo DiCaprio and Damon (looking so much like James MacArthur that at times you keep on expecting Jack Lord to turn up and say "Book him, Dano") give stronger performances than their poorly written characters deserve, too many of the supporting roles have been beefed up or created purely to add more star power. There's no narrative reason for Ray Winstone or Mark Wahlberg's clichéd characters (do Nicholson and Martin Sheen's undercover chief really need sidekicks, especially when Wahlberg's mere presence makes the last act isolation of DiCaprio utterly nonsensical?), while characters like Alec Baldwin's Steve McGarrett figure just leave the film feeling horribly overpopulated with too many people competing for screentime at the expense of the story and what should have been the central duo's dilemma. Not that there's much dilemma left. DiCaprio's undercover cop fares best, but Damon's undercover crook is much less interesting than Andy Lau's equivalent in the original - no longer torn between playing a good cop and genuinely wanting to change and become the good person he pretends to be, he's reduced to a rather bland half-dimensional stereotype while the contrived and underdeveloped romantic triangle is straight out of 30s melodrama, not helped by Vera Farmiga's tendency to change her expression every syllable in what increasingly looks like an impersonation of Corinne Bohrer. With characters this thin it's hard to get involved in the film as more than a disinterested observer and consequently there's not even any tension to any of the setpieces - the surveillance operation that goes wrong tipping both sides off to the moles in their ranks, the failed attempt by one mole to identify another at the cinema or a warehouse shootout all fall surprisingly flat even as exercises in technique.

All this would be forgivable if the film was more interesting or even sporadically exciting, but sadly it's a very dull and drawn out affair that never justifies two-and-a-half hours of screen time. The original was a tight 100-minute thriller with a great pulp premise elevated by good writing and fine performances by two directors with barely a fraction of Scorsese's talent. There's absolutely no reason that it shouldn't have been the basis for a terrific American remake that could even have improved on the original, but sadly this is a case of far too much talent for the film's own good. Distinctly Mediocrefellas.

Not as good as the original, but Nicholson and DiCaprio's performances make up for it. Matt Damon is disappointing.