Scorsese's Back in Black & He Brought Jack!
The Departed
Movie review by Nick Olds
The Departed shows two reasons why Japanese cinema is light years ahead of ours:
1. Hollywood is so money conscious they'll put out anything with a big name in it;
while Japanese films make money from their stories. America is only concerned with
box office success and who is on top. No one wants to drop $10.50 on 90 minutes of
nobodies. 2. Whereas we always wanna see the guy get the girl, Japanese films kill the
guy as the girl is prostituting herself to get a plane ticket to see the guy. Ya know,
that ironic stuff.
And that's why The Departed, based on the 2002 Hong Kong crime drama Internal
Affairs, like most of Martin Scorsese's pictures will set precedents for American cinema.
And ultimately it had to be directed by Scorsese, the only American who could make
this modern tale of betrayal and revenge so compelling.
Not that Mr. Scorsese didn't have a little help from his friends. And though The
Departed's cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson is
top shelf, this isn't just a movie with stars, i.e. The Black Dhalia. Each big name here
was hand picked to play their signature character and it is as if Scorsese had them
write their own parts in the story.
The Departed's plot is a tangled web of two lives revolving around the same people.
DiCaprio and Damon play two sides of the same coin. They bang the same girl and
work for the same guy without knowing. It's an hour-glass, as the main characters
start out close, gradually widen apart, almost come together in the middle, then separate
again until finally meeting as their lives collapse on top of one another. Amazingly
well done.
Yet The Departed is a sign of the times for American movies. We didn't make the film
as much as we bought it. Such a modern thing to do, buying products and now ideas
wholesale from Asia. But if we can't even amuse ourselves without help from the Far
East what good are we? Ingenuity, it's supposed to be our main export, damn it.
So do yourself a favor and see The Departed. Then go out and rent every critically
acclaimed Japanese film of the last decade. And then, if you've still got the rice balls,
make a major motion picture. It's our only hope.
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