Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 13 March

The Departed (Scorsese, 2006)

On Monday night Martin Scorsese sat in the Dolby Theatre and watched patiently as his latest film received no academy awards from ten nominations.

While I’m sure that was a dis­ap­point­ment, per­haps his mind went back to 2006 when he was mak­ing anoth­er ‘comeback’, return­ing to the gang­ster genre where crit­ics at the time felt he belonged.

I had read art­icles about the mak­ing of this pic­ture – Scorsese need­ing an oxy­gen tank to get through it – and was under the impres­sion that this was his last big swing at great­ness. Maybe his last swing at all?

The Departed turned up in cinemas dur­ing my first few weeks as a weekly crit­ic and I was still sharpen­ing my pen­cil. Therefore, I was primed for cri­ti­cism, espe­cially as it was a remake. A remake!

Suffice to say, I own a copy of this film now.

Also on Monday, as the Academy Awards wound to a con­clu­sion, we watched Scorsese’s After Hours at the Wellington Film Society. I had thought going in that there was such a thing as major and minor Scorsese and After Hours was one of the lat­ter. How wrong could I be?

And how wrong was I about The Departed?

Boston, “some years ago”. Two ambi­tious young men enter the police academy. They’re both from the South Side, Irish and work­ing class and they both have secrets they don’t want spilled. Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) is a mole planted by vil­lain Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) wants to be a real cop but gets recruited by Martin Sheen to go under­cov­er in Costello’s crew.

So we start with two moles (or rats if you prefer) both look­ing for the oth­er – an all-time great thrill­er set-up. As it was when Wai Keung Lau and Siu Fai Mak first told the story in the Hong Kong sen­sa­tion Infernal Affairs in 2002. Unfortunately (and com­par­is­ons are odi­ous but inev­it­able) Martin Scorsese’s heavy­weight ver­sion dis­ap­points when set against the lean Asian original.

Refer a friend

Where Infernal Affairs was “tight­er than a nun’s nasty”, as my old English teach­er used to say, The Departed is flabby. Too much expos­i­tion, too much back-story, and the addi­tion of a love tri­angle with the beau­ti­ful shrink (Vera Farmiga) is an unne­ces­sary twist-too-far.

It’s almost as if each of the stars has to carry a whole lot of extra weight that their star­dom demands but the pic­ture doesn’t. Nicholson is bril­liant and enter­tain­ing but how much of his work drives the story along? Not so much.

Despite all these qualms, The Departed is still one of the best films of the year, but do your­self a favour and seek out Infernal Affairs to see a film that feels like it’s re-inventing the medi­um – like Scorsese’s films used to.

Where to watch The Departed

Aotearoa: Streaming on Neon andThreeNow

Australia: Streaming on Binge and FoxtelNow

Canada: Streaming on Netflix, Crave and Starz

USA: Digital rent­al from the usu­al outlets

UK: Streaming on Cannel4OnDemand