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Sunday, October 08, 2006

The Departed: a tpGal Movie Review


As I walked out of the theater three little girls (ages approximately 9-12) asked me how the movie was, and I immediately answered "it's not for kids." The mom, an exasperated woman rolled her eyes and said to the girls "See I told you. You're not seeing it!"

I assume these girls are recent Leo DiCaprio converts as they were too young to be original Titanic fans. Unless they are having heart palpatations for Matt Damon or Jack. Regardless, I stand by my assessment -- the Departed is not for kids or even most folks in the mid-west.

Remember that scene in The Usual Suspects - no, scratch that... Reservoir Dogs where the cops and the bad guys are standing in a circle and they all have their guns pointed at each other and then all of a sudden all hell breaks loose and in the end it isn't clear who's alive or who shot first. This whole movie was basically a 3 hour version of that scene - but without the colorful names.

One minor complaint (other than the last shot which was cheesy) was that some of the dialog had been toned down but they didn't reshoot the scenes, they just dubbed it softer. If a character mouths the word "f*ck" I don't want to hear "hell" or nothing at all. I think maybe the idea is to tone down the language to get a lower rating, but with everyone's brains all over the floor what is one more "f*ck"?

All in all, it was suspenseful and enjoyable. Mark Wahlberg was great, and it's nice to see Donny W. even if he doesn't get to talk.

3 comments:

MWR said...

Remember that scene in The Usual Suspects where the cops and the bad guys are standing in a circle and they all have their guns pointed at each other and then all of a sudden all hell breaks loose and in the end it isn't clear who's alive or who shot first?

No. Are you sure you are thinking of the right film?

Lame about the ADR/dubbing, but it's obviously the fault of the fucking MPAA. What were they supposed to do, reshoot the scenes?

tp_gal said...

That's right... it was Reservoir Dogs... sorry.

MWR said...

I almost asked if you might have meant Reservoir Dogs. But I wanted to hold something back.