Celebrating Great Films


Showing posts with label Mou gaan dou. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mou gaan dou. Show all posts

Friday, January 23, 2009

The Departed

The Departed#49 at time of writing.

Martin Scorsese's remake of Hong Kong gangster flick Infernal Affairs is epic, powerful, and only occasionally indulgent. There's a terrific cast (although it's tempting to imagine an alternative universe in which Pacino and De Niro 20 years ago starred), and a fantastic set-up: a gangster mole in the police force and an undercover cop in the gang are both trying to find each other out.

The tension is kept sky-high, the plot has more twists than a candy-cane, and the acting is second-to-none. Both the critics and the box-office loved it: It won the Best Picture Oscar (the movie with the most uses of the F-word to do so), and it's the highest-grossing Scorsese film.

A small gripe - I don't normally spot continuity errors, but it is hard not to in this film; there are little bits of sloppiness everywhere.