Alternative Film Guide

The Departed, a generally well-made if overlong and laughably absurd police thriller, comes with a respected pedigree: It was directed by Martin Scorsese, and it stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, and Los Angeles Film Critics Best Actress winner Vera Farmiga. And then there is multiple-award winner Jack Nicholson, the man who gave some of the best performances of the 1970s, and who every few years still manages to create a thoroughly believable screen character.

In The Departed, however, Nicholson gives the sort of self-indulgent, over-the-top burlesque of a performance that ruins dramas even while winning critical raves and assorted awards. ("Ohmygawd, did you see how he manages to lift one eyebrow all the way to the top of his forehead while the other goes way down to the bottom of his lower lip? That’s real acting!") Scorsese clearly let the veteran actor do as he pleased, a mistake the director also made several times in the past with master scenery-chewer Robert DeNiro (e.g., New York, New York, The King of Comedy). Perhaps Scorsese was hoping for the Boston underworld’s Randle Patrick McMurphy (of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), but instead he got the male Baby Jane of the Irish mafia. The only thing missing is the curly blond wig.

While Nicholson’s foaming-at-the-mouth thug throws The Departed completely off-balance, Leonardo DiCaprio and Vera Farmiga try to pick up the pieces. As always (even when miscast, as in Scorsese’s The Aviator), DiCaprio is totally convincing. But Farmiga is the one who delivers the film’s most believable performance. Surrounded by numerous actors who seem to believe that more is better, the actress opted for a different route: She underplays her (seriously underwritten) character — and steals the show. (The fact that the The Third Man homage — near the film’s end — fails miserably is not the actress’ fault.)

Since I haven’t seen Wai Keung Lau and Siu Fai Mak’s 2002 Hong Kong thriller Mou gaan dou / Infernal Affairs, I don’t know how many of the flaws found in The Departed stem from the (much shorter) original and how many were concocted by Scorsese and screenwriter William Monahan (and/or the studio, Warner Bros., and/or the film’s producers). But those flaws are there — from the thriller’s lack of thrills and its unnecessary 152 minutes (a good half hour could easily have ended on the cutting-room floor) to a — literally — mind-blowing finale that makes a bloody mess out of heads, logic, and any sense of verisimilitude The Departed might have had.

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Alternative Film Guide

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