When You're Facing A Loaded Gun...

One of the most eagerly anticipated movies of the Fall season is director Martin Scorsese's The Departed.

Based on a 2002 film from Hong Kong, called "Wu Jian Dao" or Infernal Affairs, Scorsese has assembled a great cast for this crime thriller. From all indications, the movie should garner its fair share of attention from Oscar, come early next year. Whether or not it means that Scorsese will actually win an award--is anybody's guess.

Roger Friedman, of Fox News.Com, got a chance to see the film at a screening last Friday night. He has posted his musings about the film, which appeared yesterday in his daily Fox 411 column:

Jack Nicholson in a Martin Scorsese film? With Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg in the cast as well? Are you kidding?

No, I am not.

"The Departed," which I saw on Friday night, is a rocking comedy-of-a-gangster-shoot-out stuffed with great performances both big and small by all these guys, and Scorsese — who returns to his favorite genre — is the puppeteer pulling the strings.

Actually, he's not pulling all the strings. Nicholson is completely "out there" and over the edge in a performance that will either win him kudos or tomatoes (I vote for the former) as a psychopathic killer who has no personal boundaries and works, shall we say, outside the margins of even recognized behavior for organized crime.

In one scene, Nicholson pulls out a sex toy and surprises Damon in a movie theater. In another, he wears sunglasses all the way through despite, I'm told, Scorsese's wishes that he didn't.

But you can see that Nicholson took to his work with relish, and — as he did with The Joker in "Batman" — he makes sure no one forgets him.

Still, "The Departed" is Scorsese's film. From the first strains of The Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter," he's telling us we are back in the land of "Goodfellas" after his last two films, best picture nominees "Gangs of New York" and "The Aviator."

And while "Gangs" had its share of crazy, unpredictable, graphic violence, really nothing prepares you for the bloodletting in "The Departed." It's at once maniacal and casual, and would make Tony Soprano and his gang run for the hills.

"The Departed" constitutes a couple of ideas mashed together. It's partly an American remake of the Hong Kong classic "Infernal Affairs." Then again, the story has been moved to Boston and turned into the saga of Whitey Bulger, an FBI informant whose gang runs wild while the feds clean up the mafia.

Nicholson is the Bulger character (he's named here for New York mobster Frank Costello).

Damon is the bad cop who's in Costello's pocket; DiCaprio is the police mole in Costello's gang, sent in by Martin Sheen and an unusually good Wahlberg.

In many ways, the story set up in "The Departed" is reminiscent of Michael Mann's "Heat" as DiCaprio and Damon spend most of the movie as each other's doppelgangers. Their paths only meet toward the end, when the plot is clearly laid out and resolution for every one of these corrupted characters is close at hand.

There are some good little performances, too, from Alec Baldwin (in an especially funny improvised scene), Anthony Anderson and newcomer (after a decade of work) Vera Farmiga as the girl caught between Damon and DiCaprio.

There are a lot of great things about "The Departed," but I would say the greatest might be Thelma Schoonmaker's effortless editing. She finally won an Oscar last year for "The Aviator," but I think what she has done here, especially in the first act, is amazing.

She and Scorsese really are a team. Scorsese and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus get the performances and the spectacular shots. Then Schoonmaker adds the timing and pace. In "The Departed," she's got scenes within scenes, and the action moving back and forth almost at the same time, and it all works. You might even call this film "The Deceptive" because the work is so good.

Scorsese remains our greatest director, surpassed by no one. He is also part of a dying breed of grand auteurs that includes Robert Altman, Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood, Sidney Lumet, Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola. The rest of them now have one thing Scorsese doesn't: an Oscar.

This is a sore point for the Academy. If Scorsese isn't nominated for one this year, I think it's time he got a Lifetime Achievement Award. "The Departed" is so far above what we see in theaters these days. But standards are so low now, I'm just worried new audiences won't appreciate it.

I agree with Friedman wholeheartedly. Scorsese is loooong overdue for some sort of recognition from the Academy. Fingers crossed.

Meanwhile, IESB/The Movie Reporter has posted Twelve Film Clips From The Departed--courtesy of Warner Bros. As much As much as I hate this tactic--I call it "the clip dump"--I still couldn't resist checking out a few of 'em anyway...On the surface the movie looks awesome!

The Departed opens on October 6th