When The Departed was released on DVD, my wife and I were living in our tiny apartment in Fishers, Indiana, not far from our local Target, 3 minutes away. On that Tuesday, Target had an exclusive two-disc edition like the one shown above, and included within was a copy of the screenplay (in miniature form, the size of a DVD case).
That was all I needed to hear. I'd seen the film in the theater and predicted all of the Academy Awards bestowed upon Scorsese and company. I wanted to see this film again, read the screenplay, and check out the bonus features in this set.
Unfortunately, that Tuesday was also the day of a huge snowstorm, and I didn't go to work. My wife, however, had to go to her job, which was about 7 minutes away. I tried to get her to stop by Target on her way home (not out of the way at all), but no dice.
She told me over and over, "They'll have plenty." I didn't believe her. I'd had some terrible luck with this particular Target not getting enough copies of the "Target Exclusive" versions. I spent the day in a resentful panic.
So we had a minor squabble — something ill-advised and stupid about me not being able to rely on her, blah blah blah.
This obsessive-compulsive need to buy stuff is a real bear. I remember spending that whole day pissed...because I couldn't get a copy of The Departed on DVD with a screenplay inside. I'd love to say that I've grown since then, that I've matured, and that maybe I've even conquered my shiny disc OCD somewhat. Mostly I just don't ask my wife to stop off and buy stuff like this for me.
I went to the store a day or two later and they had plenty of copies. The snow kept the DVD hounds like me at home, and their spouses didn't pick up a copy for them either.
That's the copy I'm watching tonight for only the second time since, and I've never read the screenplay. That's just a shame for so many reasons.
The Departed is the kind of film that comes along once a decade — maybe once in a lifetime. Here you get Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin, Vera Farmiga, and a long list of character actors you've seen play heavies and sidekicks in other films.
Lots of films have expensive casts, but not every film comes with such a great story. Yeah, yeah, Scorsese re-tooled a Hong Kong crime thriller trilogy called Infernal Affairs, relocating everything to Boston. I don't recall many bad reviews of The Departed during the film's original run, but now there are plenty around the Web. Blu-Ray.com even calls the film "mediocre," which is a happy load of revisionist horseshit. The Departed isn't Scorsese's best film, but this is still a great one, certainly worth picking up, and if you can track down a Target version (good luck), you can even get a smallish copy of William Monahan's screenplay.
But is The Departed worth arguing or obsessing over during a snowstorm? Probably not.
Oh John, you've hit on a sore subject for me. I hate - HATE - The Departed, only partially because of the movie itself.
ReplyDeleteI had the great pleasure of seeing Infernal Affairs before I watched this inferior knock-off. The original Hong Kong masterpiece puts this one to shame. Scorsese & co changed the ending in a way that completely undermines the meaning of the story, and the subtle performances by Andy Lau and Tony Leung make Wahlberg and DiCaprio look like maybe they should go back to attending acting workshops. So, yeah, I disliked the film itself.
But what really sends me into rants like this is what the movie represents.
1) Hollywood feels the need to remake EVERY foreign hit. I think there are maybe, oh, 10 bona fide writers still working in Hollywood these days. Otherwise, it's hacks hired to translate dialogue from foreign films so the studios can cash in on a proven scenario. This crap is currently ruining movies for me, since it's almost all I get to see.
2) Hollywood keeps doing this because they know damned well that American audiences just REFUSE to read subtitles. The laziness of American moviegoers frequently threatens to change my opinion of all human beings as inherently good creatures. Refusing to watch foreign movies is especially ludicrous when it comes to Hong Kong action movies like Infernal Affairs, which give fans of the genre everything they're looking for!
3) After not winning an Oscar for a handful of other classic movies, all more distinctive, original, and meaningful, the Academy and other awards organizations lumped accolades onto Scorsese for doing exactly what I hate: rehashing material already well covered, just with a few little words running along the bottom of the frame. The U.S. film community doesn't reward originality and risk. They reward recycling and playing it safe.
I'm not one of the revisionists you refer to. I hated this one the first time I saw it. Just ask my beloved wife, who was subjected to the first draft of this rant as the credits rolled. And - I don't mean this to come off as defensive as it probably does - the only "horseshit" is that The Departed was ever passed off as more than a bloated sausage-fest.
Okay...taking my Ritalin...
I don't disagree with any of your points, Jeff. At one point I had myself convinced I could make a living by writing screenplays. Not so much anymore...
ReplyDeleteI hadn't seen (or even heard of) Infernal Affairs prior to watching The Departed back then, so I had no frame of reference and thought this film was brilliant at my first viewing. My fault, because I'm woefully ignorant of Hong Kong cinema.
Eventually, I saw Infernal Affairs, which I dug a lot too. I'll grant that seeing the original first will make any remake look like cheating.
I'm not anti-subtitles by any means. The next film is latter-day Kurosawa. Stay tuned.
Thanks for your writing, John. I'm really enjoying this journey through your collection and your unique take on a blog about movies.
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks to you, Jeff, for articulating so well my own sentiments about The Departed. I can never seem to get beyond "Gah!"