The Departed

Title: The Departed (2006)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Genre: Crime
Lead Actor(s): Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon
Rating: R
151 minutes

I have watched this movie on DVD, but most recently I watched it on fx. It was quite interesting how they changed the 237 fuck words or deviations. The movie is very complicated. Jack Nicholson is a Boston crime lord, Frank Costello. He takes a very young boy under his wing and gets him to go through the police academy. Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) quickly rises in the state police and is put on the Costello investigation. On a parallel Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) comes from the same neighborhood. He also goes through the police academy. He, however, is asked to go undercover for the Costello investigation. He is put in prison and eventually works his way to the inner circle. Sullivan is trying to find the rat in Costello’s organization and Costigan is trying to find the rat in the police.

I like Matt Damon in these kind of roles. I am not as much of a fan when he is the dashing hero. I like him much more as the smarmy ass. His character in this film is a more sinister version of his role in The Informant! I would really like to see him in more roles like this than roles like the Bourne movies. He is fine in those, but I think Damon really stands out in roles like these. He is so good at appearing to be a good cop. Sullivan is as vanilla as a crooked cop can be. That is what makes him so interesting.

This is another movie where Leonardo DiCaprio manages not to smile throughout the whole thing. I am not saying he has to go and do a comedy or a feel-good movie. He can be in the types of movies he likes but still have occasion to smile. This lack of smiles does not mean that his performance suffers. It takes a certain type of man to be willing to be arrested, spend time in jail, and delve into the underground that he so strongly hates. DiCaprio plays that character extremely well. Costigan begins to lose himself in this persona that he has had to build. DiCaprio walks the line between making the character so brutish as to be cartoonish and so moral as to be unbelievable.

Jack Nicholson is a major badass. I adore him as an actor. He has fun with this role and owns it in such a way that only Nicholson could. He is so good at making an awful character oddly likable. I can’t help but think that Eric Roberts got some of his inspiration for Salvatore Maroni from Nicholson’s performance.

Scorsese understands these types of movies. This is not the first gangster film that he has directed. He knows how to emphasize the elements central to a character like Costello in such a controlled way.

This is a great movie with great performances all around. Despite the fact that we as watchers know from the get-go who is the mole in each operation, we are filled with worry and tension for the characters. It is almost worse to have the information gnaw at us for the 2.5 hours.

********** 10/10

Inception

Title: Inception (2010)
Director: Christopher Nolan
Genre: Drama, Sci-fi
Lead Actor(s): Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page
Rating: PG-13
148 minutes

Christopher Nolan is quickly becoming one of my favorite directors. Inception is trippy and thinky and great. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, the best “extractor” around with a very preoccupied subconscious. Extractors go into people’s dreams to unlock secrets for other people. Cobb and Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are recruited for a big job and they must build a team including a forger, Eames (Tom Hardy), an architect, Ariadne (Ellen Page), a chemist, Yusuf (Dileep Rao), and the benefactor, Saito (Ken Wantanabe) to go deep into a mark’s mind.

Cobb has the most story in the movie and it is very complicated. DiCaprio handles such an intricate character with the taut skill he has become adept at. That being said, I would like to see him as a lighter character. His recent choices for characters never have a chance to smile and he was just as good at characters that smile. Back to his performance in this movie, I completely understand why Nolan only intended for DiCaprio for the role. This character is constantly tormented by personifications of his subconscious. He literally faces his evils in a more concrete way than the average person can dream. Cobb, however, feels that he has to continue. It doesn’t matter if he puts his whole team at risk. This gravity ways on DiCaprio as heavy as an anchor. Every movement, facial expression, every inflection is defined by this evil.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is absolutely magnificent. He is half of the comedic relief (the other being Hardy as Eames) and also a more balanced and level person than Cobb. He is more dimensional than Cobb as well. Gordon-Levitt is just fun to watch in the movie. DiCaprio is tormented and marvelous, but Gordon-Levitt just helps pull the audience away from a constant and sharp decline with Cobb. Gordon-Levitt has really grown into a fun and talented actor.

The one actor I was probably most disappointed with was Ellen Page. She was great the first 20-30 minutes, but as soon as she started discovering Cobb’s back story, I thought she dropped the ball a bit. I know that Page can do serious, even frightening. She proved this in Hard Candy. As such I am not entirely sure why when things got darker, she distanced herself from the character. I think Gordon-Levitt’s character would have been just as effective in the role this character had to play.

The directing and writing, both done by Nolan, were interesting and made the movie more of an experience. I am dying to know how he did those hallway scenes. I also want to say I loved the villain. There were times where it was so utterly unsettling. The villain really bumped the movie to the next level. I am trying not to give too much away because it would ruin the movie and the ad campaign was so careful to reveal so little. That is how I like my trailers. They need to leave some mystery so I don’t come out of the theatre feeling like I could have saved my money and just watched all the trailers to get to the end.

If Inception is not recognized for certain elements come award season, I will be very disappointed and it will probably just make me like Nolan more. I urge everyone to see this movie. This is what great movies can be. They don’t have to be in 3-d, if they have a good plot, fun and interesting characters, and the director can use his imagination. Too many directors are relying on 3-d to make their movies. If Avatar had not been in 3-d, there is no way it would have made the massive amounts of money it did. It certainly would not have been nominated for Best Picture. I will now get off my soapbox and give one last plea to see this movie. There have been practically no good movies, not made by Pixar, out this summer and finally this arrived. If it were not for Ellen Page, this movie would have gotten a 10.

********* 9/10