Tuesday, February 13, 2007
The Departed
I'm really not having a good week for seeing Oscar contenders. The Departed has been hyped to the sky in advance of its nomination, but I don't feel it deserves it.OK, I'll grant you, the premise is clever. A police unit that uses moles to investigate organized crime is itself infiltrated by a mole. Moley, moley, moley!
Clever, but hardly brilliant. The woods are full of clever crime dramas. You don't see, for example, Lucky Number Slevin nominated for major awards. There are crime dramas that are smart, not just clever, such as Mystic River. But The Departed is not a particularly smart movie.
And, oooh, my goodness, the range that these actors give us. Matt Daimon is cocky. Leonardo di Caprio is brooding. Martin Sheen is paternal. Jack Nicholson is weird and self-indulgent. They should have just used CGI animated characters, for all the originality we see in the casting or performances.
But while the film isn't overflowing with originality, there are a couple bits of funny foreshadowing I enjoyed. Early in the film, students at the police academy receive a lecture on the physics of bullet wounds to the head, which proves useful information for the audience since we have to watch so many head-shootings during the course of the film.
In another scene, diCaprio is mocked by one of his superiors for making a literary reference. "What's the matter - Shakespeare not good enough for you?" Indeed, the movie's bloody climax, which leaves almost none of the film's main characters standing, is quite Shakespearean in its unrelenting brutality. Still, it is more than a little pretentious for Scorcese to try to put a literary dress on scenes that feature so many brain-splatterings.
Don't get me wrong. I like crime dramas as much as the next guy, and I thoroughly enjoyed this movie on that level. If you're looking to get your adrenalin level pumped with a nice shoot-em-up action movie, by all means see this movie. If you are looking to be edified by a thought-provoking, artistically crafted Oscar contender, look elsewhere.
posted by Mentok @ 2:12 PM,
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Monday, February 12, 2007
Notes on a Scandal
I have a theory that Hollywood defines "great acting" as yelling a great deal with a British accent. In that sense, this movie deserves all the praise it has received, for it does in fact contain a lot of yelling by British people. If you enjoy that sort of thing, you should definitely see it.On the other hand, I found that if you filtered out the accents, this movie was not that great. The plot was pretty heavily telegraphed. There was no point at which I was left wondering what was going to happen next.
In brief: Judi Dench is a lonely old spinster / battleaxe teacher at an inner-city British school. Cate Blanchett is an enchanting art teacher who takes a job at the school and promptly becomes involved in a very messy and dangerous sex scandal. Dench's conniving character soon tries to manipulate the situation to her own advantage. When events go awry, much British shouting breaks out.
I think what disappointed me most with this film is that the lead actors played so much to type. Judi Dench played a Judi Dench character. Cate Blanchett plays Cate Blanchett.
There were two really good performances in the supporting cast. Bill Nighy, who plays Blanchett's much older and long-suffering husband, manages to carry off his role with both panache and subtlety. Likewise, veteran character actor Philip Davis manages just the right dash of humour as the horny-goof fellow teacher who has a crush on Blanchett.
Still and all, for all its weaknesses, the movie has a message. It tells us that lonely spinsters are probably old lesbians and that old lesbians are generally evil. That's a message that we don't hear very often in this day and age. Should we hear it more often? You be the judge.
posted by Mentok @ 12:35 PM,
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