The Shrine

Wow. Best movie i have seen all year. I am not that big of a Scorsese (probably spelled wrong, but i am lazy) fan, i found Gangs of New York too long and too blah, but The Departed was great through the whole film. I was hesistant when i heard it was 2.5 hours long, but you wont even notice, in fact you'll want it to keep going. Great jobs by Damon, DiCaprio, Nicholson, Walberg, and Baldwin.

You must go see!

Yeah, I saw it, I wasn't all as into it as you (I actually liked Gangs of New York much better), but it's undeniably a good flick. A review said that Scorsese finally made a great "good movie" instead of a flawed attempt at a masterpiece, for the first time in ten or fifteen years or so, and that was about my take on it too.

Count me as one who liked the underrated Gangs of New York better. I never understood the almost universal adulation for Departed, but the split decision on GoNY. Both are great movies IMO, with GoNY being better.

Gangs was waaay too self-indulgent, and I found the constant flashbacks insulting ("YOU MAY NOT REMEMBER ME FROM FIFTEEN MINUTES AGO, BUT I'M THE COP. SURPRISE!"). That said, I did like it.

I liked the Departed, mostly, but found a lot of the violence gratuitous, and found the ending, in particular, nihilistic. And a lot of it just didn't make sense to me: the Irish gang kills a cop, and cops see the guys that likely did it, and they don't shut them down? Come on.

The acting was great, though, and Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg's characters were <i>awesome</i>.

The Departed wrote:<b>Ellerby:</b> Go fuck yourself.
<b>Dignam:</b> I'm tired from fucking your wife.
<b>Ellerby:</b> How is your mother?
<b>Dignam:</b> Good, she's tired from fucking my father.

Wahlberg was AWESOME. Shit, I'd nominate him for the Supporting Actor Academy Award in this one.

Compared to Gangs of New York, The Departed had great performances all around and smoother pacing. I loved Gangs, but it did drag whenever Daniel Day Lewis wasn't onscreen.