...is the one that won it this year. Fuck. What a year to miss the theatrical runs of each and every candidate for the Best Picture Oscar.
I've seen two of the candidates on video, both of which sport some nice awards including the grand freaking prize, and they're both utter gems of cinema.
Not since 1988 have I failed to see any of the Oscar-nominated films in the theaters. That's nearly a twenty-year fucking streak, and the one year I broke it was the year some seriously kickass movies made it up there.
I would have gladly traded in the year I swallowed crap like The English Patient or American Beauty if it meant seeing both Little Miss Sunshine and this latest gem I've seen, The Departed, up on the big screen where they belong.
The Departed is a film I wanted to see when it came out last September (or was it October? I don't even remember anymore) well before any Oscar buzz even started (though I understand that quite a bit of it was already stirring about in pre-production).
When I finally saw a barely passable copy of it on a bootleg DVD that my sister-in-law brought home, I had mixed feelings; I was ecstatic to finally get to watch this fantastic film, but at the same time I really, really felt bad about not having seen it in its cinematic glory.
Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese and Oscar-winning screenwriter William Monahan have crafted a masterpiece of narrative. Granted, he borrowed the plot from Infernal Affairs, a Hong Kong movie, but considering the guys who made that movie (or movie trilogy) have openly expressed Scorsese's influence on their series of films, I guess it's a bit of tit-for-tat.
As all the materials have stated, the film is about a cop, played by Leonardo DiCaprio in easily the best performance of his career, who infiltrates Boston's Irish mob, headed by a devastatingly sinister Jack Nicholson, and about a mob mole, played by Matt Damon in yet another astonishing display of versatility, who has infiltrated the Boston police force. The story is so full of twists and turns that to discuss it at length would give away some meaty surprises, but suffice it to say that the characters find themselves in a race against time, each trying to uncover the other.
As though he felt his esteemed leads were not enough to carry this brilliantly-woven narrative, Scorsese tapped the services of an all-star supporting cast that includes Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen and Alec Baldwin, all of whom deliver richly textured (and in Wahlberg's case, career-defining) performances that, together with those of the principals, make this movie that much greater as a whole than the sum of its parts, which says a lot. Even without the Oscar nod, Mark Wahlberg has officially graduated from the name Marky Mark, and has transcended his starring roles in such turkeys as The Big Hit and The Perfect Storm. Alec Baldwin may now be forgiven for his long streak of bad movies and his supporting role in the godawful Pearl Harbor. Martin Sheen may now be remembered for having playing an important role in a momentous film, rather than his stint as the President of the United States on television.
The success of this film all comes down to the writing and the acting. The action, or more appropriately, the violence is so rampant it's almost cartoony, and you can bet this movie isn't about fight choreography or car chases, but it's just as riveting as any of those things because once the script starts on its roller coaster ride it basically grabs the viewer by the throat and doesn't let go until the end credits roll.
Here's the thing of it: in my frustration at missing it in the theaters I read all about it on the internet, spoilers included, and while I admit it would have bit a lot more hard-hitting had I been caught by surprise by a lot of its surprise twists, especially towards the end, I still found myself a little startled by how everything turned out.
The last film I saw with a similar script and narrative structure this good was Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. It even operated on the same principle; a mole has infiltrated a gang and the movie is about smoking him out. This script had just as much panache and followed its own path. The absence of any Tarantino humor notwithstanding, though, this movie benefitted from some truly incredible writing.
When this movie first came out late last year I asked a friend of mine what he thought of it, to which he could only respond: Bleak.
Well, to be honest, bleak it was, but to my mind it was so much more than that. Scorsese has truly shown himself to be a director for the ages. I mean, he already has more than one masterpiece in each and every decade since the 70s. Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, and now this.
Oscar or no, this should easily be one of the best-remembered films of his career, and with good reason, too.
I feel terrible about seeing this movie on a bootleg DVD because as far as I'm concerned, to do so is a big fat "fuck you" to the makers of the movie, who in this case really did deserve my money, a lot more so than those fuckers at Columbia and Marvel pictures for making Ghost Rider, or Tom Cruise did for any of his vanity movies, especially the Mission Impossible trilogy. It makes me feel bad because I realize now that if I called myself a movie lover while just watching this stuff on pirated DVDs and not in the theaters would be the same thing as calling myself a comic-book lover if all I did was to read them at the store and never buy any. In both cases I'm doing a severe disservice to the art form.
Well, to make it up to these guys, I am hereby committing to buy the real DVD of this someday. They may not need my money, but for giving me a movie this good they damn well deserve it.
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