On DVD: The Departed

[Spaced Out Looney]

The Departed

Directed by Martin Scorsese.

Starring Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicolson, Vera Farmiga, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, and everybody else in Hollywood.

Description (from imdb.com): Two men from opposite sides of the law are undercover within the Massachusetts State Police and the Irish mafia, but violence and bloodshed boil when discoveries are made, and the moles are dispatched to find out their enemy's identities.

[Spaced Out Looney]

The basic premise of this movie is that a member of the Irish mafia (Matt Damon) infiltrates the MA state police and a cop (Leonardo DiCaprio) goes on an undercover assignment in the Irish mafia. Each side knows they have a mole and tries to smoke 'em out. By the end you have each mole chasing the other, essentially.

It gets a lot more complicated but the movie moved really fast, so I probably missed stuff. The movie has all the standard Scorsese gang/cop/mafia violence and bloodshed. Lots of gore and shocking moments. There is also quite a bit of funny.

Thoughts:

Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio look incredibly alike in this movie that I had a lot of trouble telling there characters apart. Take a look at the pictures (2, 16, and 35 in the slideshow) to see what I mean. I believe this was deliberate, as their characters were mirror images of each other.

There was interesting uses of cell phones, mostly used by each mole to communicate with their handlers, but also as the thing that may or may not get them caught.

They used a cover of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb," in one scene, which was pretty good.