It feels like a shame to let another Friday the 13th go by and not make reference to the seminar horror franchise. But really, would anyone miss it?
Cami and I saw The Departed on Monday night and were blown away. The performances were excellent and I feel like nearly everyone was firing on all cylinders. It was very interesting to watch Leonard DiCaprio bring this vulnerable and wounded performance to the screen. You really got a sense of his paranoia, like he felt he was being backed into a corner. The more I watched him, the more I forgot that he was actually a cop! Matt Damon did a great job in this respect, too. Upwardly mobile and polished, the audience forgets who he’s really working for until he switches out the SIM card in his cell phone and gives Jack Nicholson a call.
Ah, yes. The cell phones. They were a bit of a distraction for me. Near the end of the movie, I wondered how much time I had spent watching people talk on cell phones. I’m getting totally distracted here, but it made me think about how the technology of cell phones has made movies different. I remembered Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. There was a scene right at the top of the movie, just before they head out on their quest for Sliders. Kal Penn’s character stops halfway down the hall, away from the door of their apartment. "Dude, I forgot my cell phone." "You wanna run back and get it?" "No, we’ve gone too far."
That tiny scene is critical to the rest of the movie. Because without it, you’d be sitting in the theater asking yourself "Why don’t they just use their cell phones and get directions?" It’s come to the point that you have to write the convienence of the technology out of the plot in order to make the character’s journey believable!
It also makes me think of a movie like Phone Booth – which would have been a great thriller 20 or 30 years ago. But with the advent of cell phones, a glass phone booth in the middle of downtown New York becomes a social anachronism. You wonder what it’s even doing there when everyone in their grandma seems to be carrying a cell phone. It’s distracting.
At any rate, speaking again about The Departed, I can’t think of another film that so effictively used cell phones as a means of serving the plot. Their use helps ratchet up the tension. Is someone going to call during a raid that’s going to tip someone off to the double-cross in play? When someone calls, who is on the other line? Is it the rat you’re trying to smoke out of your organization? The film is very smart about utlizing the technology in a realistic way.
If I can get back on the performances for a second, I’ve established what a great job I think both DiCaprio and Damon did. But there are tons of great supporting performances in this thing. Martin Sheen finally gets an opportunity to drop that Presidential gravitas he’s been carrying since The West Wing and gives a very grounded, fatherly performance wrapped in a bit of pathos. You always get the impression that there’s something more going on beneath that cool exterior, but that he is genuinely concerned with DiCaprio’s tightrope walk.
Mark Wahlberg was actully very impressive as Dingam. They wrote the character as an insufferable S.O.B., but it really made me like him. Not just the character. I started to respect Wahlberg a little more for the performance.
Big hat’s off to Alec Baldwin for playing Ellerby. I thought every scene he was in was hilarious. Great comic relief played with a wise-ass edge. Who would have thought that in his days as a leading man, Alec Baldwin would go on to become this great, self-depricating pinch hitter in this big name movies. The man is the king of the cameo appearance. That scene during the stakeout when he’s getting amped up and a few scenes later you see he’s sweated through his shirt… I thought that was a brilliant detail. Funny, but real.
I also have to give it up to Ray Winstone as Mr. French. I don’t even know who Ray Winstone is, but his performance as the gravel-voiced enforcer made me want to look him up on the Internet Movie Database and find out what else he’s been in!
The only performance I can’t really put my finger on is Jack Nicholson’s. I thought he did a great job and – of course – he could read the phone book and make it entertaining. But I couldn’t decide if a "less-is-more" approach would have served him better or worse. You get the sense that his interpretation of Frank Costello is a very hands-on guy. He kills, he exposes himself to dangerous business dealings, he gets his hands dirty. But how much of that is because he’s a psychopath who enjoys doing that kind of stuff and how much of it is because he’s a ganglord who is getting a little long in the tooth and wants to prove he’s still a threat to his underlings? How much of it is bluster and how much of it is self-preservation.
Part of me wanted to think there was a lot more going on with Costello than we were meant to know and Nicholson’s performance hints at that. But for every time he uncorked that trademark Nicholson unhinged demenor, it was almost distracting. With every over-extended arch of the eyebrow, I started to think of it as parody.
No one goes to Nicholson looking for nuance. He’s not going to completely submerge himself in any role because – as a movie star – sometimes it’s more interesting to watch his personality at work rather than the personality of the character he portrays.
I don’t have a point, but sometimes I wonder how much of Nicholson’s acting expertise is utilized to keep the bigger aspects of his personality in check. Maybe a role like Costello serves it right up the middle and let’s Jack be Jack. For his sake and all our sakes.
That’s pretty much all I have to say about The Departed. Of course you need to go see it. It’s a fantastic film.
