And Another

Faithful

You know what was a great movie? The Departed.

Wait, no it wasn’t. It made changes from the source material (2002 Hong Kong police drama Infernal Affairs) that detracted from the story. The ending didn’t really work for a handful of reasons. And how many times do we need to hear that same Dropkick Murphys song? If your movie relies on one particular tune more than That Thing You Do!, it might be worth a phone call to your music coordinator.

Still, I liked the atmosphere, and there were some good aspects. The pacing feels surprisingly quick for a long, talky film, and most of that talk is pretty sharp. Lots of weirdly entertaining performances of the aggressive, macho sort that nobody seems to bring out of actors as readily as Martin Scorsese. It can be a bit much — Jack Nicholson goes off the track in the second half — but it’s pretty fun to watch Alec Baldwin revisit his knockout turn in Glengarry Glen Ross and play it as a comedy this time around.

So let’s compromise, and say there’s some good stuff in The Departed, but there are clearly aspects that don’t work. I’m gonna go ahead and take out part.

With that part removed, Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker (who won the Best Editing Oscar for this flick) can tighten up the formerly 151-minute movie a bit.

Excellent, the deed is done. Now throw some zombies in there and we’re all set.