Scorsese Apologizes

What’s with the crush Scorsese has with Leonardo DiCaprio? I will get to that in a second.

This past weekend my wife and I saw Martin Scorsese’s new flick, The Departed and it was nothing more than brilliant.

The first thing I said to her when leaving the theater was, “this was Scorsese apologizing for making us watch Gangs of New York”. Now to be fair, the Aviator was a terrific movie but I love to watch movies like Goodfellas and Casino and I eagerly wait for these types of movies to be made.

Was this movie as good as Goodfellas or Casino, well truthfully no and it will be hard to make a movie as good as those two but the cast in the Departed was worth every penny we spent eating stale candy.

Once again Scorsese uses Leonardo DiCaprio as the lead for this gangster movie and once again, DiCaprio pulls off a killer performance. Some say DiCaprio could be the next De Niro.

This one time orphan from the show Growing Pains has come a long way and although his acting in the Titanic was a bit cheese ball, his roles in Basketball Diaries, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and the Aviator were excellent.

With out a doubt Jack Nicholson stole the show. You really believe he is a mobster and you can’t stop watching him on the big screen. I only wish Nicholson did more movies like these and less ones like As Good As It Gets type roles. Granted he was very good playing an obsessive compulsive writer who befriends his gay artist neighbor but the Jack I like to watch on the big screens says things like

“I eat breakfast 300 yards from 4,000 Cubans who are trained to kill me, so don’t think for one SECOND that you can come down here, flash a badge, and make me nervous.”

There are a few more actors worth mentioning in this film and I must disagree with my wife on this one regarding Matt Damon. Granted he is a good actor, to me he seems to play the same characters in most of his movies (since Good Will Hunting). I did not see much of a difference with this role, his Syriana role and his Jason Bourne characters. Then again, in 1998 he did play poker junkie Mike McDermott along side Edward Norton in The Rounders, and that movie is a must see.

The final person to mention is Mark Wahlberg who shared a lot of screen time with Martin Sheen. These guys were great together and Wahlbergs performance was top notch. He played the kind of guy you have to like just because he says what he thinks and does not hold back.

I think Wahlberg’s performance was so good, I think Damon and him were miscast and should have swapped roles. Either way, I will definitely rent this movie when it comes out and will watch it on TV time and again.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 23rd, 2006 at 2:03 pm and is filed under Cool Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.