"The Departed" Is Excellent!

Speaking of coffins, they needed plenty of them in The Departed, which we just saw last night. I must say, this movie wasn't awesome, it was fucking awesome. Lots of cops, lots of bad guys. Lots of cops who are also bad guys. The only Italian-American gentlemen were dispatched with quickly, and the most of the surnamic vowels were followed by apostrophes.

Three guys who, when I first became familiar with them, I had thought to be nothing but pretty boys for the girls to flutter over (Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Mark Wahlberg) were in this film, and they were great! (Not just here, either -- Damon was great as Ripley, Wahlberg was great as Diggler, DiCaprio was great as Hughes.) So were Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, and Alec Baldwin. I'm not kidding; SEE THIS MOVIE. It's possibly as good Scorcese's great films Taxi Driver and Goodfellas. Actually, it was a remake of a Hong Kong crime film from a few years ago called Infernal Affairs, which I had meant to see a while ago, but which is now at the top of my Netflix queue.

I'm going to have to do some reading on the Bulger brothers. One (William) was an influential Boston politician, another (James "Whitey") was the boss of the South Boston Irish mob and an FBI informant. He is now a fugitive and is on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, right next to Bin Laden. He was largely the basis for the Nicholson character, though not strictly.

Here's the trailer on Google Video.