Rating: 8.5 out of 10 from 724,199 votes
Who's in it:
Leonardo DiCaprio
Matt Damon
Jack Nicholson
Mark Wahlberg
Martin Sheen
Ray Winstone
Vera Famiga
Alec Baldwin
many, many more know names and faces
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Year: 2006
Duration: 151 minutes
Accolades: Won four oscars. Winning Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Achievement in Directing, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film Editing. Also a further nomination for Mark Wahlberg for Best Supporting Actor.
Plot:
Set in Boston against a backdrop of deceit, hidden agendas and identities in the Irish/American gangster scene.
Two young cops take on two different roles as informants. Billy (DiCaprio) is placed undercover by the police to infiltrate Frank Costello's (Nicholson) gang while Colin Sullivan (Damon), who appears to be a clean cop is in fact working deep undercover for his own agenda of an informer for th Sullivan gang. Neither is aware of the other's existence with the files for Billy being kept under close guard by Sheen and Wahlberg's characters.
Who will find out the other's identity first as both sides come to realise there is a mole in their midst, could it be be the difference between life and death?
Interesting facts about the film:
This movie is the winner of the Best Picture Oscar with the most uses of the word 'f***', being used 237 times.
It is remade from a film in a foreign language (originally in Cantonese), and is the only film to have been done so that has gone on to with an Oscar for Best Picture. (Remade/adapted from 'Infernal Affairs')
Review:
So being only the second Martin Scorsese film I have ever seen (the first being The Wolf Of Wall Street last year) I approached this film with a little trepidation, not knowing quite what to expect especially seeing as it is a gangster based movie; which out of normal preference I would avoid in favour of 'something girlie'.
However I was very impressed by this movie. The plot is very good and kept my attention throughout, the plot was easy enough to follow which helped. The acting in this is superb, I am completely surprised that the actors for the main roles were not more widely recognised and did not win Oscars in their own right. In particular I think Leonardo DiCaprio was over looked (and not normally being an advocate of his work this is a fair assessment of his skills in this film), but from doing a bit of background research into this it seems that the decision may have been mutually taken not to put him forwards.
The emotions shown in this movie feel genuine some how and helped the movie keep its jumpy edge and the tense parts of the plot.
You really start rooting for 'the good guys' through most of the movie with intermittent times of hoping that the bad guys might get away with it. You even start to doubt who is 'good' and 'bad'.
Unlike many gangster-ish movies this was also easy to watch as it wasn't all dark backgrounds and half lit sets, it was easy to watch everything that was going on and you didn't feel like you were missing something that might be going on in a dark corner.
Just about everyone is in this, with every few minutes (at the start of the movie or when characters are introduced obviously) moments of going 'oh look it's so and so' or 'do you remember them from...?' This doesn't distract from the plot in an way as everyone acts for their roles in this movie and you forget them from their previous work which unfortunately isn't the case for every movie I have seen.
The departed is a reference to fallen officers which is half explained through the story line.
There is also a spot of romance for the characters in the form of Famiga's character, who Damon's character has to hide his true identity from as well as those he works with.
This is definitely worth a watch, especially for anyone with a preference for gangster/police drama type movies.
This movie is worthy of its eminent place within the top 250, I'm even at little surprised at how low down the list it comes. But then I haven't seen everything above it yet.
Let's see what is between this and the number one spot.
This movie is blooming good if you ask me (sorry for the English-ness there) and I would very much recommend it.
My rating: 9/10 (the only reason not giving 10 as I have not seen all of the top 250 and there may be something better out there)- sorry!
For more information visit: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407887/
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