The Departed

This is a prestige package from top to bottom, but it strikes me as indicative of what’s wrong with movies today that this should be Scorsese’s most successful film to date (and correspondingly makes The Wire shine more brightly as an example of what can actually be done with the crime genre.) I simply cannot agree with those who see this as Marty’s return to form after Gangs of New York and The Aviator, both of which were more substantial to me, particularly the latter. Like Spike Lee’s Inside Man, this is a relentlessly twisty thriller script with a bunch of high-profile actors attached, but it is not a film trying to say anything true about anything significant. People complain a little about Jack Nicholson’s Joker-like turn as the Boston mob boss, but I considered it more amusing than the brains that repeatedly splattered the walls. Leonardo DiCaprio is well-equipped to agonize over his role as a police mole in mob activities, and Matt Damon maintains the necessary surface to function as a mob mole in police activities. Alec Baldwin, Mark Wahlberg, and Martin Sheen all offer flavorful performances as law enforcement officials, but Vera What’s-her-name? just holds her place as the insultingly preposterous female love interest. The whole thing is smoothly made and satisfyingly kinetic, but utterly inconsequential. (2006, theater, n.) *6* (MC-88.)