Iro's One Movie a Day Thread

#108 - The Departed
Martin Scorsese, 2006



Two different cadets in the Boston police - one a mole for a crime lord, the other expelled in order to go undercover - find themselves on opposite sides during an investigation into organised crime.

How do you judge a remake of a film you liked? It'd be tempting just to make a laundry list that compares the two different versions of the film, highlighting the alterations the later film makes and whether or not they add or subtract to the experience of the original (though I figure that if you're listing comparisons then you're more likely to be criticising the remake than praising it). Of course, you should at least try to judge the remake on its own terms while not constantly picking apart its faithfulness to (or deviation from) its source material. Having decided to re-watch The Departed for what I think would be my third viewing - and straight after watching source film Infernal Affairs, too - I figured that, for the sake of this review at least, if you want to go through a side-by-side comparison then you can probably piece it together by comparing these reviews. I could even publish every comparison I make in a separate post, but I figure they'll fit into this review well enough anyway.

Long story short, I actually hate The Departed. Solid high concept aside, it's a considerably bloated film that struggles to fill out to its immense 150-minute running time. More often than not I thought the film added extra bits just to explain things to an audience that should be able to follow along anyway. Whole sub-plots are added that have next to no bearing whatsoever on the main plot or any significance in and of themselves. Characterisation isn't much better. Leonardo di Caprio and Matt Damon star as the undercover cop and the criminal mole respectively, but neither one of them has any real effect. Di Caprio all but sends himself into cardiac arrest trying to work himself up into a complex character by alternating between furrowed-brow angst and red-faced roaring (with the occasional scene showcasing how his hard-bitten rat actually has a sensitive side so you know that he really is a good guy), while Damon comes across as a fairly limp example of a tough guy. Mark Wahlberg supposedly earns an Oscar nomination for playing a tough-talking Bostonian (gee, what a stretch of his acting ability) whose character spends at least 95% of his screen-time being a useless and grating annoyance. It seems like the only reason his character even exists is so that



In my review for Prizzi's Honor, I criticised Jack Nicholson's performance as a Mob enforcer for being a sluggish, marble-mouthed, charm-free imitation of himself. Add twenty years and the fact that the makers decided that every male character in this film needed to be violent and hypermasculine to the point where calling them cartoonish would be an understatement and, well, I just feel kind of embarrassed for Nicholson as he plays an incredibly deranged crime boss who can't even be considered a "love-to-hate" kind of character. Vera Farmiga plays the token female character, who is relegated to being an incredibly bland third part of a love triangle that includes di Caprio and Damon, neither of which I can understand her falling for. At least the original film could give its leads separate love interests with fairly distinct personalities, even if they had all of five scenes between the two of them.

It's also rather amazing how The Departed stretches the already-thin plot of Infernal Affairs out by an extra hour, mainly by padding it with the sort of cinema that people have come to expect from top-tier Scorsese. Bloody gangland violence, cinematographic flair, lightning-quick editing, supposedly killer choice of music...yeah, it's Scorsese, but here it seems like self-parody moreso than a master filmmaker playing to his strengths. Non-diegetic music tracks will drop in and out suddenly, supposedly because it fits the pacing of the scenes but in practice comes across as distractingly incomplete and similar to a damaged CD skipping while it plays. Thelma Schoonmaker won an Oscar for editing here, and I will concede that the film moves at a rollicking pace thanks to the speed of the cuts but technical appreciation only goes so far when you realise that there's not much of note actually happening between these hundreds and hundreds of cuts. One scene has di Caprio deliver a short line and it cuts at least twice as he says his line. People have grumbled about the symbolism involving a certain furry rodent's appearance in this film, but I'm honestly just as annoyed by all the X's you see in the background. We get it, Marty, you want to pay homage to Scarface. If you the reader ever watch this film again, now you can't unsee them.

If there is one thing that I reckon that The Departed handles even remotely better than Infernal Affairs, it's definitely



As important as that scene and the remake's handling of it may seem, it is an anomaly amidst the rest of this film (okay, maybe that and the scene where di Caprio pursues Damon through a neon-washed street). The Departed is an overblown, hollow, frustrating and frankly embarrassing film to watch. It takes the nuance and restraint of the original and filters it through a loud and brutish Hollywood machine under the impression that making everyone and everything nastier automatically makes for captivating cinema. Many of the characters are unsympathetic loudmouths or boring stereotypes or both. The film speeds along with dozens of cut per minute so as to cover for the fact that that its plot does not adequately match up to its length. I'll be glad if I never have to hear "I'm Shipping Up To Boston" ever again. Even the live version of "Comfortably Numb" was put to far less painful use in The Sopranos (ironically, by being played off a soundtrack CD for The Departed). Everything that carried across from the original is given an almost parodic Westernisation (Bad guys meet in a regular movie theater in the original? Now they're meeting in a porno theater and one of them is carrying a giant black dildo. Instant classic.) The Departed is definitely my least favourite Scorsese film and definitely my least favourite Best Picture winner. I can understand the Academy wanting to give Scorsese a sympathy vote, but the fact that they gave it to such an insufferable example of diminishing returns, well...all I can say is "rats".

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

You wasted your time writing if you hated it that badly.

I write a reply on how The Departed sucks compared to Infernal Affairs and immediately you post a negative review of the of the former. Hallelujah. Thanks Iro.

Why's that?

Not a problem.

I was just joking Iro.

You can see how I might think you were being serious, though.

I've had Infernal Affairs saved on my DVR for months, but I still haven't gotten around to watching it. Maybe it is superior to The Departed, but the fact that you rated the latter only is pretty ridiculous, in my opinion. I respect that you backed up your opinion and gave your reasons -- as I've said a few times before, I enjoy reading your write-ups and this has become one of my favorite threads to follow -- but your hate blinders must have shown you a different film than the one I watched.

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I do wonder how I'd have rated The Departed if I hadn't already seen Infernal Affairs first because a fair few of my complaints are how the remake often changes things up for the worst, but even so I would probably still stick it on the lower end of the rating scale. On its own, it feels like an overly long crime drama of very average quality that has an interesting concept but fails to flesh it out in any remotely satisfying manner (performances are bad, technique is average, etc.). I reckon it might have stood a good chance of been forgotten completely if not for the fact that Martin Scorsese had directed it and thus immediately guaranteed that the Academy would sit up and pay attention to it. After factoring in how Infernal Affairs managed to make things work by relying on the strength of its core story and avoiding almost anything that might drag things out unnecessarily (such as dropping audiences in on the cop character after a few years on the job instead of showing an incredibly tiresome "initiation" sequence), it just makes The Departed look even worse because it can't even follow a simple 90-minute plot without jamming in love triangles, random violence and extra characters (e.g. Wahlberg). Not like Infernal Affairs was perfect, but The Departed just dropped the ball so hard that it is so horribly frustrating to watch - and I've watched it three times now.

#109 - The Usual Suspects
Bryan Singer, 1995



When five professional criminals are put into the same police lineup, they decide to team up as revenge against the police but soon end up drawing the attention of a legendary crime boss.

Even though I had somehow ended up reading the entire screenplay for The Usual Suspects (which spoiled its big twist in the introduction anyway) before actually seeing the film, I still liked it enough to consider it a major favourite back in the day. Now, about a decade or so later I merely think it's a slightly better than average film with writing that's strong enough to make up for its relatively low budget. Much of that is down to the performances - of course, Kevin Spacey as the nervy, talkative "Verbal" Kint is a standout that is able to handle the suitably noir-ish narration, while the other suspects vary. Gabriel Byrne is great as the ostensible protagonist, a reformed criminal who gets dragged back into the game, while Kevin Pollak and Benicio Del Toro make for good comic relief as a result of the former's foul-mouthed snark and the latter's incredibly bizarre accent. Stephen Baldwin is sort of the weak link in the ensemble, coming across as little more than a raspy-voiced soldier of fortune but in this company being the weakest doesn't necessarily make him bad. Other side characters, such as Pete Postlethwaite's mysterious lawyer (who is played by an English actor, has a Japanese name and sounds Pakistani but still makes some sense) or Chazz Palminteri's tenacious interrogator, also make solid turns in their roles.

As I mentioned before, this film did have a fairly low budget and it does show through some filmmaking techniques that alternate between the stolid and the overly artistic (especially the cinematography that keeps the camera moving slowly and constantly with the intention of adding energy but ultimately ends up just being distracting). The score is appropriately foreboding. The film is more than carried by strong actors and an even stronger script, which still crackles even if you know the twist (or read the published screenplay). While not a major favourite anymore, I still reckon it's a great film on its own and definitely essential viewing.

#110 - New York, New York
Martin Scorsese, 1977



In post-WWII America, a saxophonist and a singer team up and become a respectable musical team but have to contend with a variety of conflicts.

It seems almost fitting that Martin Scorsese should follow up a film as dark and nihilistic as Taxi Driver with a lovingly crafted homage to old-school musicals that's set in his beloved home town of New York City (and even uses the old standard that gives the film its name as a plot point). Unfortunately, the resulting film, while not exactly bad, isn't much good either. Sure, there's the usual Scorsese flair when it comes to camerawork and whatnot, but of course it's tied to a fairly banal narrative between Robert de Niro and Liza Minnelli. They meet, fall in love, it's a destructive love they share, etc. And it goes on for two-and-a-half hours. Now, of course I get that even back in 1977 any musical worth its salt had to go for at least two-and-a-half hours but it doesn't help that New York. New York can't seem to make up its mind if it's a musical or not. There are musical numbers, sure, but none of them feel engaging, not even with the obviously talented Minnelli belting out show-stopping songs in settings ranging from cramped recording booths and audition rooms through to elaborately choreographed numbers with huge sets and lots of dancers. The non-musical drama follows a fairly predictable narrative, but it's definitely helped by the fact that de Niro is still capable of exuding some serious intensity as the talented yet self-destructive Jimmy. Minnelli holds her own on the acting front, but it's not like either of them is given much to work with. The resulting film, well-shot and well-choreographed though it is, is just merely okay and I think one viewing was enough.

#111 - Whiplash
Damien Chazelle, 2014



A first-year student at a prestigious music college wants to be a great jazz drummer, but when he is invited to join the college's top ensemble he has to contend with its incredibly harsh and obsessive conductor.

It becomes clear very early on that Whiplash is supposed to be a deliberate deconstruction of a very specific type of narrative - namely, that of a teacher using unorthodox methods to unlock a student's untapped potential, driving the student to achieve by any means necessary. Conventionally, this narrative has a tendency to produce films that could be considered inspirational and/or heartwarming. Whiplash, on the other hand, is a completely different kind of beast. Miles Teller plays student Andrew, who could have just been the sort of timid young man that lacks confidence and just needs to be brought out of his shell - if only it weren't for the instances where his drive to become a legend alienates virtually everyone around him (just check that one scene at the family dinner table or even the final scene he spends with his presumed love interest). Certain scenes even serve to make you question whether or not he is genuinely unhinged as opposed to just obsessive (what did happen to that folder?). As good as Teller is, anyone who watches this movie will definitely come away remembering J.K. Simmons above all else. A solid and memorable character actor, Simmons gets the role of a lifetime as Fletcher, a perfectionist conductor who is not above blatantly manipulating or abusing his students in order to achieve a seemingly incomprehensible ideal of perfection. Whether he's hurling chairs at less-than-perfect students or calmly divulging the rationale behind his actions, he always commands every single frame in which he apepars. Though the rest of the cast is solid, it is of course Simmons that sticks out above all others (not like the recent Oscar win wouldn't have tipped you off).

Even if you were to discount the strength of those two performances, Whiplash is still a very impressive film. The cinematography emphasises some striking use of colour - it helps a lot that Fletcher's rehearsal room is constantly soaked in a very hellish shade of yellow, while other scenes also emphasise striking contrasts between bright colours so as to create some fairly foreboding atmosphere. The powerhouse editing on display is brilliant, especially in any scene involving musical performances as the frantic cutting perfectly matches up to the high-tempo jazz being played. It all builds up to an amazingly powerful ending that I obviously don't want to spoil but makes for the perfect capper to what I'm starting to think might be my favourite film of 2014. Highly recommended.

Usual Suspects did not hold up for me at all when I rewatched it a couple years ago. Very rarely has a movie played so poorly to me on a second viewing, even if that second viewing was over fifteen years later.

Whiplash is so great. Got to be the most universally well received movie of last year. I went to buy it the other day because I already want to rewatch it. Walmart didn't have it. I will probably order it this week. It was fifth in my top ten of 2014. I think that might have been too low.

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Letterboxd

Fifth is definitely too low.

I love The Departed, but it's so my kind of movie that it would be hard for me to not love it. The only disappointing aspect of the movie for me was that it was the first time I ever thought that Jack was upstaged by the other actors. Then again, maybe that's why I think it's so good.

I also love The Usual Suspects.

Given its reputation, my general dislike of musicals and its nearly three-hour length, I expected to hate New York, New York, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. I agree that it's a very flawed, imperfect film, but I found its melding of old school Hollywood and 70's sensibilities very intriguing. You've got method acting and moral complexity against a backdrop of obviously fake, yet lovely, Hollywood sets. Aesthetically, it resembles a movie from the 50's, yet emotionally it feels very modern. Obviously the dichotomy turned off most viewers, but I really dug it. If the film is a failure, at least it's an ambitious, interesting failure.

I haven't seen The Usual Suspects since I was a teenager. I wasn't too enamored with it back then, thinking its reputation rested mostly on its twist-ending.

Everybody seems to be impressed by Whiplash. I look forward to watching it soon.

#112 - Driving Miss Daisy
Bruce Beresford, 1989



In 1950s Georgia, a Jewish businessman hires an old black man to act as a chauffeur for his crotchety mother following her causing a car accident.

It does seem like being given the Oscar for Best Picture can be a searing indictment of a film just as easily as it can be a huge honour. Driving Miss Daisy looks like it would fall prey to the former with a premise that sounds hokey even by Oscar-bait standards. A narrative built on the interplay between two characters that seem completely different on a superficial level and generate conflict accordingly but slowly warm up to one another as time progresses is a well-worn type of narrative indeed, and of course the particulars have to be just right in order to make it work. Morgan Freeman, playing a role he originated in the source play, is interesting in that his character's particular Georgian idiom makes for a somewhat-unexpected divergence from his trademark smooth Southern-tinged delivery and his character is decent enough as a man who has seen many a hardship but still remains optimistic. Jessica Tandy is his opposite number who is naturally full of consternation but still showcases a vulnerable side from time to time that contrasts with her deeply ingrained prejudices. They're definitely good enough to carry the film, but beyond that they're not especially great characters.

Outside of that, I do find the film a bit questionable. This film supposedly takes place over the course of roughly twenty years but that's not quite clear for a while and so I was initially left wondering why Dan Aykroyd's hair kept changing (movie character ageing is not quite so easily discernable when your main characters are already fairly old and thus the only real signifier is the addition of slightly more grey hair each time the year changes), but events such as Martin Luther King's rise to prominence aid in that regard. I'm not a fan of Hans Zimmer's score, especially considering how the clearly synthesised and upbeat score clashes hard with the fact that this is a bittersweet period piece set in the South. All things considered, Driving Miss Daisy was not nearly as bad as I'd expected it to be (and I did have Public Enemy's "Burn Hollywood Burn", which does reference this film rather unfavourably, in the back of my head the whole time that I watched it) that, despite the debatable handling of race relations and their greater ramifications plus a somewhat anticlimatic conclusion, isn't all that bad.

#113 - The Babadook
Jennifer Kent, 2014



A widow has to contend with raising her disturbed young son, which becomes more difficult when he becomes convinced of the existence of a nightmarish children's-book character.

I'm not particularly good at keeping up with modern horror movies, but when I noticed that The Babadook was making waves outside of the local film-festival circles I figured I should at least try it. Granted, it could have turned out to be another letdown like Wolf Creek, but fortunately it was far superior to that. It helps that The Babadook not only uses some fairly typical boogeyman tropes in the form of its titular monster, but also adds a psychological element in how the beleagured mother (Essie Davis) tries to cope with a number of mundane problems both internal (her grief over her husband's accidental death) and external (her son constantly causing trouble because of his belief in monsters). Even without taking the actual existence of the monster into account, the film's first half still produces some unsettling scenes. I think it's pretty telling about the mood that this movie creates that I never laughed once - I saw this in a theatre setting and even though people around me were laughing at levity-inducing scenes such as the son's incredibly candid responses to a social worker's questions, I was still on edge waiting for something bad to happen. I'm not sure whether or not having lighter comedic moments to balance out the serious tension of the rest of the film is such a good idea when it comes to horror movies, because while I can understand the need to give an audience breathing room, it also doesn't help if you've built up such a dark vibe that humourous scenes don't come as a relief anyway. Fortunately, I'm kind of forgiving because if a tense film can maintain the same sense of unease even through its "nice" moments then it's probably doing a good job of building atmosphere.

The Babadook looks sleek enough and manages to keep one on edge all throughout its relatively brief 90-minute running time. Though it does have its occasional moment where you can't quite suspend your disbelief (because seriously, how does a six-year-old manage to acquire a back-mounted wooden catapult capable of throwing cricket balls or even a crossbow that launches throwing darts?), it does keep up the tension nicely. It handles the whole "is this real or imagined" angle nicely, throws in a couple of convincing red herrings and manages to emphasise a serious sense of dread that adequately covers for some admittedly not-too-great effects work (because, let's be honest, considering how much build-up the Babadook gets as a result of the unsettling children's book and the impressive sound design on display, there was no way an actual visual depiction would quite live up to expectations). It's sufficiently disturbing, compelling and unpredictable right up to its final moments and has a decent heart at the centre that definitely makes it better than your average ghost story.

Iro gave The Babadook a good rating? Right f*cking on!

#114 - Witness
Peter Weir, 1985



When a young Amish boy witnesses a murder committed by a corrupt cop, a gruff yet honest detective must move in with the boy's Amish community so as to guarantee his protection.

While the plot for Witness does read like a real '80s high-concept - "Harrison Ford is a cop who goes undercover as an Amish person" - it's still a decent enough film, but I guess "decent" is as good a word as I'm likely to use. With Peter Weir behind the camera there's bound to be a certain ethereal vibe to the film, which definitely helps to prop up the film's fundamentally mundane narrative. The main plot becomes almost secondary to Ford's character as a cynical city cop trying to fit in with the quaint Amish community, which is still bristling with its own conflicts that alternately resolve and boil over with Ford's arrival. I understand how Weir is more interested in examining characters reacting to an external conflict rather than the conflict itself (which is best exemplified by Ford's budding romance with Kelly McGillis as the titular witness's widowed mother, which does draw the ire of others in the community), and it does make this film more interesting than it would have been otherwise, I suppose. It's not a bad film, but I don't really have much to say about it.

#115 - Turkey Shoot
Brian Trenchard-Smith, 1981



In a somewhat futuristic dystopian setting, a handful of prisoners at a re-education camp are picked to be hunted by their captors.

Another cult Australian film that resurfaced thanks to Mark Hartley's Not Quite Hollywood, Turkey Shoot (alternately titled Escape 2000 - not to be confused with the Italian movie that featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000) is exactly what you'd come to expect from a notoriously gory piece of low-budget exploitation. It's basically a "most dangerous game" kind of plot that also has some kind of vaguely defined fascist regime imprisoning people for the slightest of provocations and to this end it combines prison stereotypes and horror stereotypes. The first third or half of the film sets up the future victims, who range from naive innocents to unsympathetic toadies to resourceful rebels, and also the villainous hunters with their loyalty to the regime, castrated henchmen, customised weapons and...an ape-man? Whatever, just roll with it. The second half lets all the characters loose into the outback and from there the story actually gets going.

It's hard to judge a film like this on any kind of technical merits because if you're watching a movie like this, then it's definitely not because it's some kind of masterpiece. Even by "cult" standards, Turkey Shoot is still fairly underwhelming. The front half of the film doesn't have all that much going on besides setting up just about everything that shows up in the second half and giving its characters the slightest of developments in the process, but that's not especially interesting. Once the hunt begins, it just becomes a matter of watching some sequences that are largely lacking in tension or even absurd levels of violence (not even during the film's incredibly explosive finale). Not even the extremely early-'80s atmosphere does anything to make this movie anything more than passable. If low-budget '70s and '80s schlock is your thing (and it is mine, to a point) then you might get some enjoyment out of Turkey Shoot but it's chock-full of recycled ideas and struggles to make interesting variations on any of them.