Martin Scorsese's The Departed. Coming 10/10/06!

[Ladic]

will scorcese finally win the best director oscar?

[GobotFool]

Saw it, loved it, Spoilers ahead

Did anyone else find it a lil funny how everyone just started to die like domino's at the end?

[Mr March]

Reviews for both "Infernal Affairs" and "The Departed." Enjoy

Infernal Affairs (Mou gaan dou) (2002)

Genre: Live Action Film - Crime Drama Thriller

There has been a great deal of films produced in the Hong Kong crime drama genre, but also equally prolific criticism in recent years for a decided lack of creativity. Infernal Affairs (Mou gaan dou) rises to the challenge, departing from the accepted crime film formula and instead creating a dramatic thriller with a powerful script, amazing performances, and tension that never lets up. Infernal Affairs is without doubt one of the best Hong Kong crime thrillers to date and has even inspired master filmmaker Martin Scorsese to remake the film for American audiences (see The Departed).

Infernal Affairs follows the story of two talented men on opposite ends of the law, one a mole for the mob and the other, an undercover cop. Lau (Andy Lau) is an ambitious young member of the Triads who infiltrates the police by training to become a cop and eventually rising to become a detective. Chan (Tony Leung) is a cop deep undercover in the Triads for years, his identity so thoroughly erased only his boss Police Superindendent Wong (Anthony Wong) knows his true identity. When a drug deal between Triad boss Sam (Eric Tsang) and Thai gangsters goes bad for both the Triad and the Police, Lau and Chan realize there is a mole in their respective organizations. It becomes a race against the clock, both men trying to uncover who the mole is before each is discovered.

Shot with cinematic panache and written with intelligence, Infernal Affairs is an absolutely riveting film from beginning to end. Virtually every scene is filled with suspense and the script never lets the chase for the mole stop. The cinematography is fluid and sharp, with effective uses of camera movement that give the film incredible style and contributes greatly to the editing. With each passing moment, the need to find the mole leads to desperation and both men take greater chances as time shortens, stopping at nothing to find the other. Foreshadowing is brilliantly used to exacting effect, each scene building upon the other until we see investigation itself become a character, shaping the lives and fates of each character in the story. This also serves the subtle eastern religious undertone of the film, a remarkably tight web of ideology that has the character's trapped in a continuous hell, played out again and again each time the identities of the two moles slip away from the other side. Even the finale itself, culminating in a fantastic showdown, leaves the audience with both a sense of closure and an unending limbo.

The performances in Infernal Affairs are magnetic, keeping the audience firmly rooted in the story. In particular, Tony Leung's Chan is brilliantly brooding and the most sympathetic character in the film. Leung displays the perfect matching of angst and duty, making his journey throughout the film very relatable and empathetic. Andy Lau's Triad mole is intensity incarnate, played with a mix of fiery ambition and near machine-like efficiency that makes his story nearly unfathomable to behold, each scene keeps the audience in awe wondering how far he'll go and to what end. Triad boss Sam is played with savage ruthlessness by Eric Tsang, often described as Hong Kong's Joe Pesci for both his stature and menacing performances. Tsang plays the character with charisma and humor, yet it is this same attachment to the character that makes the performance so powerful once Tsang turns on the malice and brutality. Lastly Anthony Wong is brilliantly cast as Chan's police boss, played with a dogged determination and wisdom, Wong is the driving force behind the police. Wong's portrayal of the dedicated officer is embelished further by his feeling of responsibility for Chan driving his need to take down Sam.

While largely avoiding cliches with a smart script and enjoying grounded performances from the cast, Infernal Affairs does suffer some small flaws for what is otherwise a solid film. There is some melodramatic excess, limited mostly to one scene that heavy-handedly uses flashbacks inter cut between a performance that should have been unedited. There are also one or two scenes that fall flat, sapping the tautness built in the rest of the story with a scene that is overly long or a piece of dialogue that should have been cut. But such nitpicking cannot reduce the worth of everything the film gets right. At an engrossing 97 minutes, Infernal Affairs is filled with so much tension and explosive acting that it achieves more than films far longer and with less exposition. The film flows steadily and unerringly toward it's climax, rarely wasting a scene or a piece of dialogue.

Rating: 5 out of 5. An instant classic of the cops-and-mobsters crime genre, Infernal Affairs has acting, style, intelligence, and tension that delivers a film thrilling to watch and a story audiences won't want to miss.

The Departed (2006)

Genre: Live Action Film - Crime Drama Thriller

A great filmmaker like Martin Scorsese has inspired countless others to create film and build upon his own substantial innovations. So it's somewhat fitting that things come full circle in which Scorsese's new film, The Departed, finds the director inspired by the successive films of those directors and filmmakers who found influence in Scorsese's work. A remake of the fantastic Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs, The Departed is a return to great moviemaking for Scorsese and his strongest film since "Casino."

The Departed has two men, undercover on opposite sides of the law, racing to discover the identity of the other in a battle between the Irish Mafia and the Boston State Police. Inside the police, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) is mobster trained as a police officer and has been feeding information to his organized crime boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Undercover in the mafia, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a mole who did real jail time and erased his identity as cover, a scheme planned by Boston police boss Oliver Queenan (Martin Sheen) and his right hand man Dignam (Mark Wahlberg). Each mole has been working inside the other's organisation, but a gun deal between the Irish mob and Chinese mafia reveals to both sides that there is a rat in their respective houses. Now each mole faced with being exposed, Colin and Billy have to uncover the identity of the other before they end up dead.

Moving the setting from Hong Kong to Boston, Scorsese takes the story of Infernal Affairs (from an adaptation rewritten by William Monahan) and gives it his own personal touch. Preferring to embellish the story rather than pile on the pressure, The Departed is a slower paced film that builds deliberately and works towards a strong climax. Once again, Scorsese is in his element, including dialogue that solidly defines the nature of each character and infusing the film with the darker side of life. These manly characters have personalities born of the arena in which they play their game and Scorsese pulls no punches in depicting the racism and homophobia that run their lives. Alongside the artistic cinematography, none of the in-your-face violence we've come to expect from Scorsese is missing, making The Departed a film just as vibrant and visually disturbing as his other treatises on the bloody and brutal underworld.

This type high-concept film could have floundered in the hands of a lesser director, but Martin Scorsese backs up the script with a cast that performs adeptly time and again. Damon's Colin is charming and frigidly devious, ever the threat to DiCaprio's well played Billy, an angst ridden cop constantly in fear for his life. Jack Nicholson does his trademark best as the vulgar psychotic wiseguy Frank, always chummy with his strong-arm enforcer Mr. French, played with deep-voiced menace by the skillful Ray Winstone. Martin Sheen's role as Queenan is the level-headed intellect of the police, masterfully portrayed by Sheen as he moves his pawns around in an unrelenting quest to bring Frank to justice. Even minor roles shine, with a performance from Wahlberg as Dignam that is hilarious in Scorsese's trademark style of comedy-meets-vulgarity. Also of note is Alec Baldwin as Ellerby, who injects nearly all his scenes with sharp wit making the most of his screen time.

It would be easy to categorize The Departed as a flawless masterpiece, but the film falls just short of expectations. The film generally keeps us glued to our seats, but at just under two and a half hours in length The Departed could use some trimming. The slower pace sacrifices much of the high-speed intensity of the original Infernal Affairs and while the dialogue and character development are ample entertainment, The Departed simply isn't as intense nor taut as it could be. The film also suffers from the overexposure of legendary actor Jack Nicholson and the silly antics of his portrayal as Frank Costello. Every over-the-top mob boss scene threatens to reduce the film to a star vehicle for Nicholson and when his character does dastardly deeds, that foolish grin often comes across as far less threatening than it should be. Lastly the film lacks a certain freshness that always occurs when a remake comes so soon after the original, since Infernal Affairs was released in 2002. Still, it's hard to go wrong with The Departed. In it's own landscape in North America, this film is easily one of the best of 2006 and Scorsese fans will delight at this fine feature that ranks among the director's best.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5. Despite being a remake, The Departed is a success all on it's own; beautifully shot, intriguing to watch, and with acting not to be missed, the film is skillfully directed by master filmmaker Martin Scorsese back in top form.

Edited October 15, 2006 by Mr March

[DeathHammer]

Please Delete Thanks

Edited February 9, 2010 by DeathHammer

[Retracting Head Ter Ter]

That part with the Chinese black deal in The Departed :

They could have gotten much better actors. Ugh! Those guy's weren't even speakin proper cantonese. Given the background, they should be speakin Mandarin anyway. Too bad they didn't get the original cast of Infernal affairs to cameo this scene. It would have been cool to see Tony and Andy make a cameo there.

[Mr March]

Spoilers **

I liked Infernal Affairs better than The Departed.

To be fair, I'm not sure if knowing who was going to die and when ruined The Departed for me. Maybe someone who hasn't seen the original would feel a different way.

I thought Alec Baldwin was great. In fact, I think he might have been a better mobster than Nicholson was if given the chance.

The basic problem I saw was that in the original, there was more of a moral ambiguity about the two lead characters. I felt bad for both characters and I geniunely cared about what happened to them. In this remake, I didn't really care if Damon lived or died, which probably had to do with the fact that he was the smaller star compared to Nicholson and DiCaprio and to be more of the heavy to contrast DiCaprio. And I have to be honest, Leo wasn't that great in this role. I also think the ending was muddled and only existed to satisfy the audience's belief that the "bad guy must die" In the original, you had to ask yourself was it worse to die or to live with what you have done. Which I think was a more interesting choice. I think the added screentime for Nicholson because of his star power probably took away time to better develop Damon and DiCaprio. Maybe DeNiro would have been an interesting alternative for the Costello role.

I didn't even feel anything for the shrink. She cheated on her boyfriend, stuck with her boyfriend because he's the one who could pay the bills, was possibly carrying another guy's child and told Damon that he's the "liar"?

This wasn't a bad movie, I just like the original better.

That's ultimately why I gave the film a slightly less-than-perfect score. If "The Departed" was an original screenplay, this would have been the perfect film in my mind. The pacing was great, the acting was brilliant, the cinematography was astounding, the dialogue was perfect...I just wish it wasn't a remake.

Ignorance is bliss. One of the dangers of being well-watched film geek

I gotta disagree with your dislike for Damon and DiCaprio. Both performances were fantastic. I found Damon's dichotomy of charm and frigidness the perfect psycho combination. He almost comes across as a gangster version of some serial killer like Norman Bates. So normal, pleasant and even charming, no one would ever guess the heart of a monster lies just beneath, making him the perfect mobster mole. DiCaprio's character was an excellent conduit into the film's bloodshed for the audience. His character was constantly in danger and the lousy hand he was dealt in life easily captured audience empathy. The brow beating from Dignam was even better for his character and DiCaprio showed the fire driving his character that enabled him to go through it all and still keep fighting.

Vera Farmiga's character Madolyn was undewritten and not that well used. But she did serve to illustrate the true natures of the two main characters Costigan and Sullivan. As for her hypocricy, I think putting it in perspective, the result favours Madolyn. She lied about an affair; Sullivan lies about being a murderer. I think the difference is obvious.

I agree with your opinion of Nicholson. He was whoring his scenes and I think it would've been better for the film - as the ensemble piece that it was - if another, lower profile actor was used. Alec Baldwin would have been great indeed. He can pull off frightening very well (his role in "The Cooler" was scary).

Martin's films always comment on the way of life, a live by the sword, die by the sword. Which is pretty much the vicious circle of violence. I think it worked to brilliant effect here and also suited the slower pace of the film. The foreshadowing of Sullivan's demise was used with ruthless efficiency, something Scorsese is oh so good at Infernal Affairs needs that ideological underpining for Lau's character in order to hold the swirling tension of the film together as something dramatically coherent. Both ways work and work well IMO.