Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #829 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-02-19
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: DVD Region, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 151 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Martin Scorsese makes a welcomed return to the mean streets (of Boston, in this case) with The Departed, hailed by many as Scorsese's best film since Casino. Since this crackling crime thriller is essentially a Scorsese-stamped remake of the acclaimed 2002 Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs, the film was intensely scrutinized by devoted critics and cinephiles, and while Scorsese's intense filmmaking and all-star cast deserve ample acclaim, The Departed is also worthy of serious re-assessment, especially with regard to what some attentive viewers described as sloppy craftsmanship (!), notably in terms of mismatched shots and jagged continuity. But no matter where you fall on the Scorsese appreciation scale, there's no denying that The Departed is a signature piece of work from one of America's finest directors, designed for maximum impact with a breathtaking series of twists, turns, and violent surprises. It's an intricate cat-and-mouse game, but this time the cat and mouse are both moles: Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) is an ambitious cop on the rise, planted in the Boston police force by criminal kingpin Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a hot-tempered police cadet who's been artificially disgraced and then planted into Costigan's crime operation as a seemingly trustworthy soldier. As the multilayered plot unfolds (courtesy of a scorching adaptation by Kingdom of Heaven screenwriter William Monahan), Costigan and Sullivan conduct a volatile search for each other (they're essentially looking for "themselves") while simultaneously wooing the psychiatrist (Vera Farmiga) assigned to treat their crime-driven anxieties.

Such convenient coincidences might sink a lesser film, but The Departed is so electrifying that you barely notice the plot-holes. And while Nicholson's profane swagger is too much "Jack" and not enough "Costello," he's still a joy to watch, especially in a film that's additionally energised by memorable (and frequently hilarious) supporting roles for Alec Baldwin, Mark Wahlberg, and a host of other big-name performers. The Departed also makes clever and plot-dependent use of mobile phones, to the extent that it couldn't exist without them. Powered by Scorsese's trademark use of well-chosen soundtrack songs (from vintage rock to Puccini's operas), The Departed may not be perfect, but it's one helluva ride for moviegoers, proving popular enough to become the biggest box-office hit of Scorsese's commercially rocky career. --Jeff Shannon

Synopsis
Director Martin Scorsese returns to his trademark style with the violent, bruised, and bloody feature THE DEPARTED. Scorsese filched the basic storyline from Wai Keung Lau and Siu Fai Mak's masterful 2002 Hong Kong action film, INFERNAL AFFAIRS, which saw a policeman going undercover as a mob member and a mob member infiltrating the police force. Scorsese transfers the action to Boston, positioning Leonardo DiCaprio as undercover cop William Costigan and Matt Damon as undercover mobster Colin Sullivan. While Costigan and Sullivan get into plenty of nail-biting situations that almost reveal their true identities, Scorsese gradually unravels his strong supporting cast, including Jack Nicholson as Sullivan's mob boss, Frank Costello; Ray Winstone as Costello's meat-headed muscle; Mark Wahlberg as a hot-headed police sergeant; and Vera Farmiga as a love interest for both Damon and Di Caprio's characters.

Customer Reviews

Echoing previous reviews
Producing a definitive review is next to impossible as everyone on the net has their own opinions so here is my best shot lol; as a stand alone film The Departed IS a good effort by Scorsese. For the most part, the acting is believable and engaging although many people have remarked upon Wahlberg's performace as over-the-top and unnecessarily crude which I for one agree with. The cinematography is decent enough as are the technospec stuff but compared to the likes of Casino and Goodfellas; this isnnt in the same league by a long way although it remains a good 150 mins of solid entertainment.

Now the crux of the matter - with only 150mins I couldnt help but feel the writers tried to include too much of the story of the original Hong Kong trilogy and things move far too fast to be believable. I for one, preferred the back story of the younger cops finding their feet in Andrew Lau's trilogy rather than everything coming to a head in only a couple of months in the departed.

Oft criticisms were indeed the severe time compression and the amalgamation of the original 2 female characters (the innocent GF to Andy Lau plus Tony Leung's police psychiatist love interest) into only the one female role who has to interact with both Damon and Di Caprio and serve as both roles.

Andy Lau , who played Damons role in the original remarked that although he enjoyed the Hollywood re-do he didnt like the swearing (a point discussed in previous reviews) and the omission of many of the plot devices of the hong kong version.

to sum up, the departed is a flawed work that attemped to incorporate too much of the original's intrigue and suffers needlessly for it but if the thought of cantonese with subs is too much of a daunting preposition to see the originals, the departed is worthy of a viewing but it is not vintage Scorsese.

Mediocrefellas
First time round I found The Departed a disappointingly average film, but on a second viewing it's clear I misjudged it: it really is a quite bad one. Scorsese's weaknesses as a storyteller have often been discussed, but he's not helped here by a remarkably poor and horrendously overpopulated script from the usually much more interesting William Monahan that at once dumbs down the original Infernal Affairs and simultaneously overcomplicates the storytelling. For all the additional characters and running time there's no grander design at work here to compensate. It may strain for grand opera but it simply comes across as off-key light operetta sung by people with sore throats.

The chief problem is the film's funereal pacing, which the clumsy editing and energetic camerawork increasingly fail to hide. The film takes forever to set up its plot - the film is half over before Matt Damon's undercover mobster who has worked his way into a Boston police task force is ordered to find himself - but never compensates by fleshing out the characters or adding any substance to the story. If anything, underneath all the bloat and bombast the film has seriously dumbed down the Infernal Affairs trilogy's underlying themes of identity, role playing and the need to find some kind of redemption in a world that requires you to be corrupt in order to live with yourself in some kind of peace. Instead, it's become a star vehicle in the worst sense of the phrase, where the central duo of police mole in the underworld and underworld mole in the police are effectively sidelined for so much of the picture that they almost become bit players.

Yet while we get seemingly endless and often incredibly long scenes of Jack Nicholson grandstanding, doing rat impersonations, waving sex toys around, insulting priests and generally impersonating Long John Silver as the cardboard mob moss, they really tell us nothing about either the character or the story. For all the constant repetition of his catchphrase "The point is," there simply is no point to most of these scenes other than padding out a minor supporting character (who in the original had no particular personal relationship with either main character) enough to attract an A-list actor and in the process unbalancing the film so much that he actually becomes the leading role. Scorsese has always shown a tendency to relentlessly hammer home the same point over and over again at great length despite making it perfectly well early in the film, and too many of Nicholson's scenes seem to be like hearing exactly the same joke very slightly paraphrased over and over and over again.

Unfortunately the problem isn't limited to Nicholson's resolutely unmenacing cartoonish villain. While both Leonardo DiCaprio and Damon (looking so much like James MacArthur that at times you keep on expecting Jack Lord to turn up and say "Book him, Dano") give stronger performances than their poorly written characters deserve, too many of the supporting roles have been beefed up or created purely to add more star power. There's no narrative reason for Ray Winstone or Mark Wahlberg's clichéd characters (do Nicholson and Martin Sheen's undercover chief really need sidekicks, especially when Wahlberg's mere presence makes the last act isolation of DiCaprio utterly nonsensical?), while characters like Alec Baldwin's Steve McGarrett figure just leave the film feeling horribly overpopulated with too many people competing for screentime at the expense of the story and what should have been the central duo's dilemma. Not that there's much dilemma left. DiCaprio's undercover cop fares best, but Damon's undercover crook is much less interesting than Andy Lau's equivalent in the original - no longer torn between playing a good cop and genuinely wanting to change and become the good person he pretends to be, he's reduced to a rather bland half-dimensional stereotype while the contrived and underdeveloped romantic triangle is straight out of 30s melodrama, not helped by Vera Farmiga's tendency to change her expression every syllable in what increasingly looks like an impersonation of Corinne Bohrer. With characters this thin it's hard to get involved in the film as more than a disinterested observer and consequently there's not even any tension to any of the setpieces - the surveillance operation that goes wrong tipping both sides off to the moles in their ranks, the failed attempt by one mole to identify another at the cinema or a warehouse shootout all fall surprisingly flat even as exercises in technique.

All this would be forgivable if the film was more interesting or even sporadically exciting, but sadly it's a very dull and drawn out affair that never justifies two-and-a-half hours of screen time. The original was a tight 100-minute thriller with a great pulp premise elevated by good writing and fine performances by two directors with barely a fraction of Scorsese's talent. There's absolutely no reason that it shouldn't have been the basis for a terrific American remake that could even have improved on the original, but sadly this is a case of far too much talent for the film's own good. Distinctly Mediocrefellas.

Extras are surprisingly light for a two disc set - some deleted scenes, a couple of short featurettes and a trailer.

It's a bad sign
.. when you start to check how long a DVD has been running. I started to look after an hour, and there was still another hour and a half to go.

Workmanlike or uninspired (take your pick) the film doesn't grip. Rather than believe in any of the characters I kept thinking 'Oh look there's famous actor x, acting'.

Jack N chews the scenery a bit, but to no great effect.

The original seemed to have atmosphere and menace, this is just a bit dull.