the departed

[DaBestSpoona]

I wish hollywood would attempt something silly and make it work, like 2 white guys in hk, one infiltrating the triad, and the other in the hkpd in makeup to look chinese. It would be like White Chicks but serious.

[snugglepony]

Also love the soundtrack (Gimme Shelter, Thiefs Theme, Comfortably Numb).

scorsese has a history of making spectacular calls on soundtracks, imo reaching his peak in selecting nilsson's jump into the fire for the cracked-out helicopter scene at the end of goodfellas. absolutely perfect.

in the departed, all the musical choices are on point, especially the dropkick murphys' shipping up to boston for the title sequence and then twice more throughout the film. for the record, i fucking hate the dropkick murphys, but this song is used to amazing effect (plus, it's a woody guthrie lyric pulled from the archives a la the mermaid avenue project...). i get chills.

[xcoldricex]

dammit now i have to watch IA again. the building scenes were much cooler with the hong kong skyline, that's all i really remember.

what was with that chinese guy's cantonese. i could even tell it was horrible and i can't even speak cantonese. they should've had a cameo appearance of tony leung or andy lau or something, that'd been funny.

[Swych]

Swych, i see your subconscious mind peeking through - "Dicrapio"?

ach blunders. hes actually one of my favourite actors (even in the Beach...) but good eyes tweedle. You should check my essays for me.

[PAND]

case in point - after dicaprio gets shot in the head, he slumps to the ground like a sack, and the lift door, just watch the lift door, it closes, nudges his corpse, opens, closes, nudges, opens, closes...there's such a streak of farce running through the whole scene i found it hugely humourous. as a qualification, it's not the har-har-har type of humour, but the insidious sort of chuckle one might produce after a vicious prank.

I saw IA in the cinema, and when the same thing happens to Leung, i don't recall such LOL.

[tweeds]

I saw IA in the cinema, and when the same thing happens to Leung, i don't recall such LOL.

like i said, i will get down to watching Infernal Affairs... i really like tony leung though, i think he's really talented and hardworking as an actor.

Swych - twenty bucks an essay guarantees you zero errors. i'll see you in supermarket.

[samsikle]

question about the movie:

what was in the yellow envelope?? when leonardo went back to the girl and said blah blah keep this if anything happens to me.. was it like proof or w/e?

[beast]

question about the movie:

what was in the yellow envelope?? when leonardo went back to the girl and said blah blah keep this if anything happens to me.. was it like proof or w/e?

In the original IA movie, the girl eventually produced evidence to exonerate leonardo's character to be a cop. There was no yellow envelope in the original IA movie.

I guess he gave her some information to exonerate him as a cop in case he croaks.

[beast]

After watching the movie lately, my review & spoilers are as follows:

1. Overall, an average show if you did catch Infernal Affairs. The original was fresher and more exciting with the twists if you caught it the first time.

2. The second half of the movie is odd. It was literally ripped off from IA, down to the casual banter from the characters ie on how to spot a cop. The differences besides from the settings were:

a. The dying gangster who told Leo he gave him the wrong address but yet Leo managed to find it. He died before he can squeal on Leo.

In IA, Leo's character fingered a dead gangster as the 'rat' and managed to con Jack's character to go to the secret lair where the goods were kept because the 'rat' knew where was the secret lair.

b. No first cop being killed, ie the black cop in IA.

c. No similar Mark Wahlberg character in IA.

d. No Jack's wife in IA but there was one in IA 2.

e. In Departed, Matt was gunned down execution style as 'punishment'. In IA, Matt's character was someone who wanted to be 'good' but ended up not being 'good' but got away with the perfect crime and is tormented and suffers knowing that and he wants to be in Leo's character's shoes.

3. Like IA, there were some continuity problems. In Departed, why did Leo SMS Matt to tell him they were going to the Sheffield warehouses out of the blue, when in their only cnoversation, Leo did not trust him at all?

4. Other interesting touches include both Matt & Leo sleeping with the same girl but neither knew about it. Not in IA.

In IA, the characters used Audiospace, a Hong Kong made mainly tube hifi product.

In Departed, they used McIntosh, an old name American made mainly tube hifi product. When Matt was killed, I thought I saw a CD player on the floor. Not a McIntosh. Possibly Audiospace?

[tweeds]

actually i picked up a mag today, and without pouring too closely over it i read something about the departed being "inspired", but not "based on" IA. quoted scorsese's words.

interesting little backtrack by the filmmaker?

[bluespring]

for some reason i always like the originals! whats next? a bitter sweet life?

[nairb49]

actually i picked up a mag today, and without pouring too closely over it i read something about the departed being "inspired", but not "based on" IA. quoted scorsese's words.

interesting little backtrack by the filmmaker?

That's a load of crap if you ask me. I'd say this is a borderline reproduction, nevermind a new movie "based on" an old one.

[asuzano]

infernal affairs was much better...

[beast]

actually i picked up a mag today, and without pouring too closely over it i read something about the departed being "inspired", but not "based on" IA. quoted scorsese's words.

interesting little backtrack by the filmmaker?

Thats clearly untrue.

"Inspired" would be like the movie Troy where it is loosely based on Homer's Illiad, and many details stated by Homer have been changed to fit into the movie.

For "The Departed", the second half is a carbon copy of IA. It is not "inspired".

[tweeds]

yeah...

i just borrowed IA from a friend and watched it...it's good but i think i liked the departed more. the editing was far slicker than the HK one, and in terms of style i think the departed scores higher. scorsese makes excellent use of the lens, with really poignant closeups and camera angles. even though the second parts of both films were almost identical, scorsese's editing really comes to the fore. in the lift door scene, which happened in both films, he brought the camera really close to dicaprio's body and let the door slide in and out of view very pointedly, as opposed to IA's take where the camera simply sat back and observed.

also the comedic element was played up alot more, and personally i'm a fan of films that don't take themselves too seriously, but stay focused and intelligent (ie. not cheap slapstick). IA was much more developed plotwise i thought, but my vote still sticks with scorsese.

that said, both films are great. i'm going to find a way to grab the second instalment of IA.

[xcoldricex]

infernal affairs was much better...

i agree. tenchars.

[beast]

yeah...

i just borrowed IA from a friend and watched it...it's good but i think i liked the departed more. the editing was far slicker than the HK one, and in terms of style i think the departed scores higher. scorsese makes excellent use of the lens, with really poignant closeups and camera angles. even though the second parts of both films were almost identical, scorsese's editing really comes to the fore. in the lift door scene, which happened in both films, he brought the camera really close to dicaprio's body and let the door slide in and out of view very pointedly, as opposed to IA's take where the camera simply sat back and observed.

also the comedic element was played up alot more, and personally i'm a fan of films that don't take themselves too seriously, but stay focused and intelligent (ie. not cheap slapstick). IA was much more developed plotwise i thought, but my vote still sticks with scorsese.

that said, both films are great. i'm going to find a way to grab the second instalment of IA.

Well, naturally Hollywood million dollar productions would look better than lower budget foreign flicks.

I bet Jack, Leo, Marty and Matt's pay alone would surpass the entire budget for IA. Just look at the number of crew involved in both productions.

I only watched the latter half of IA 2 but I thought the critics' assessment was that it was not great in terms of acting and plot ie the motivation for Matt's character to become bad.

[masuerte]

I felt really freakin numbed by the ending of the movie... just point and shoot ... point and shoot... point and shoot.

whereas in Infernal Affairs, I was on my knees screaming NOOOO!!! And Matt's character seemed better explored and was less of a bad guy in INfernal Affairs.

[Kasper]

saw it yesterday and i felt Infernal Affairs was so much better. i feel they have tried to do too much in a single movie and it made the movie full of plotholes (especially for someone who hasn't seen Infernal Affairs). the way the movie is made, it's so obvious that Leo is the rat and the fact that they didn't show dates like in IA makes the beggining difficult to place in context (there's suppose to be something like 10 years between the time they graduate from police academy and the main story, but it's not easy to see in the Departed). and even though IA probably like a tenth of the budget of the Departed, it pretty hard to tell. i though the editing was nice and that they have much better managed to use Hong Kong (although the Hong Kong skyline is like 100 times better than Boston's).

[beast]

and the fact that they didn't show dates like in IA makes the beggining difficult to place in context (there's suppose to be something like 10 years between the time they graduate from police academy and the main story, but it's not easy to see in the Departed). and even though IA probably like a tenth of the budget of the Departed, it pretty hard to tell. i though the editing was nice and that they have much better managed to use Hong Kong (although the Hong Kong skyline is like 100 times better than Boston's).

Hi!

In IA, the time difference was like 10 years & they even used different actors in the Academy & when they were working.

In Departed, it was only a few months.

[Kasper]

Hi!

In IA, the time difference was like 10 years & they even used different actors in the Academy & when they were working.

In Departed, it was only a few months.

really, i though the departed used the same timeline as IA. they should have, cause the fact that there's only a few months between police academy and the main story just makes the story much less plausible...

[beast]

really, i though the departed used the same timeline as IA. they should have, cause the fact that there's only a few months between police academy and the main story just makes the story much less plausible...

Hi!

I recall it was mentioned throughout the show, during the psychiatric sessions etc etc by Leo it was a few months. That includes his serving of time for some assault misdemeanour, his coming out & hooking up with his cousin to sell dope & meeting Jack's crew.

In IA, Leo's character was booted out of the academy in his youth (maybe in Hong Kong you can be a cadet only in your youth) and in IA, he was already a seasoned gangster. In IA 2, we learnt he served under a few underworld bosses before the final one. Presumably he snitched on them as well.

[viv1984viv]

for those in the UK infernal affairs is on tonight on c4, yay!

Definately a multi-view movie!