Bet that wasn't in the Hong Kong version.
Still, much of the movie is vintage Scorsese. A severed hand with a wedding ring still on it. Wahlberg rat-a-tat-tat-ing expletive-loaded lines with Joe Pesci aplomb. Conventional gangster wisdom along the lines of what French tells Billy after the newcomer smashes a bottle over the head of someone sitting next to him at a bar. “There are guys you can hit and guys you can't,” he cautions, sounding like a concerned Boy Scout leader.
The Departed's only flaw — and it is, perhaps, inherent in the concept of adapting a Hong Kong shoot'em-up — is that the film never ripens into something deeper than its splendid cat-and-rat game. Surrogate fathers and fatherless sons are underlying themes, but the emphasis remains on the guns, guts, corpses and, in this case, mobile phones.
That said, the movie is still one of the best of the year — in the histrionic manner of Cagney's White Heat or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Dazzlingly done, with a welcome gloss of comic panache, it's the sort of thing Scorsese does better than any other major director in Hollywood.
Maybe one day Oscar will realize that.
And act accordingly.
RSS