| Issue #30, October 20, 2006 |
Guy de Fraumeni’s Hollywood In The Hamptons
“Bang! Bang! You’re dead” squeal l’il barely-out-of-their-diapers kids with delight. Martin Scorcese’s latest entry in the blood–bath sweepstakes he reshaped by wiping away any traces of remorse the pug-uglies used to have. Can’t you see little Marty Scorcese running around Little Italy mowing down half the population with a mean, pointed finger? Many years before there was a Mafia next door in Chinatown, they were mopping up Tong War blood. In the contemporary movie world, the U.S. Gangster genre bleeds like cheap red dye in a Chinese-laundry load. Where violence is concerned-it’s a small world.
Hong Kong crime-movie-makers have been influenced by the likes of Anthony Mann, Coppola and natch’, Scorcese. Now, tit-for-tat, he has remade the remarkable 2002 Hong Kong hit, Infernal Affairs. Our directors have been influenced stylistically by the East’s swell-elegance of swift action and Scorcese shows it but here the director is at his Western best, with a great team including Editor Thelma Schoonmaker and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus. Together, they recreate Scorcese’s forte-the coarse scuminess of the streets that ruled his Goodfellas, the only difference is in the fact that the streets have been relocated to Boston, though most shooting was done in NYC. The “Bahston” accents are all fine, and the art direction is excellently Harbor, or “Hahbah,”-esque but, besides the director’s escalation of his signature beatings and bullet-riddling, this is a good adaptation of the Infernal Affairs trilogy by William Monahan. However, be prepared to suspend your belief a few times too many, especially for the long, long arm of coincidence and aged-in-the-business role-padding by the elder Jack Nicholson as nutsy mobster Frank Costello. He has added length (Departed comes in at a long two hours and 30 minutes. The downtime in last third is not Nicholson’s fault) and a lot of “Jack’s” stuff, where he has outrageously taken over direction as well. Odd for Scorcese, whose reputation defies never having gotten an Oscar. I have to admit that Jack adds needed humor and volcanic, eruptive peaks that seems to have the director competing to top him. What a devil Jack is!
The stars are Leonardo Di Caprio as Billy Costigan, the good cop and Matt Damon as the bad cop, Colin Sullivan. They trained together and both were kind of Costello’s trainees early in life. Damon will be bad, he will be a mole in the police for Costello and Di Caprio will be kept off the force to be an undercover infiltrator into Costello’s underworld. Both give excellent, and nearly their best, performances but they are to me more glama’ boys than gangsta’ boys. If you saw Andy Lau and Tony Leung in the original and I mean original, then you know what I mean. To worry you now with plot details makes no sense, ‘cause doing that makes no sense in a movie that makes no more claims to be anything other than what it really is-a shoot-‘em-up action movie. You’re lucky they haven’t developed “blood and brains, flung hot and slimy into the audience” technology yet. Avid fans will protest that that it shows a corrupt society spoiling more rapidly than it rots, as if no other film has done that.
Absolutely, it is a power-pounding movie. For me, I like the power of performances by The Departed’s highly-skilled cast; Mark Wahlberg gives a bruising performance as the enforcing-arm Sgt. for the commanding Capt., played by sturdy Martin Sheen, who sent Di Caprio’s Costigan tunneling underground. Adding supercharged moments to the complex goings on is brilliant Alec Baldwin (when is he not?), as head of a Special Investigations Unit that Damon’s Sullivan has been assigned to. Here, Scorcese’s diversified ambitions tamp down the burning issues of the two young men forced to rat on those around them, bearing down on their true natures and bogging down the last third of the film. Frilly departures fracture an already divided movie. Of course, the heat gets turned up for the dynamic finale.
Besides Jack’s talent-sample reel, you a have female love interest played by Vera Farmiga, a wasted talent, and way too many symbolic rats and gnawing contrivances amid the stunning flash.
For the director, too much is just right.
Guy-Jean de Fraumeni is the producer/writer/director of award-winning European and American feature films. He has been a judge at major film and TV award competitions, including the Oscars, the Emmys and various film festivals. Sarah Halsey assists him.
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