The Departed Reviews

The Departed doesn't improve in any way on Infernal Affairs, which served up a return to stylish Hong Kong action.

| Original Score: 5/10

Scorsese revisits old territory in The Departed, and he doesn't do anything he hasn't done brilliantly several times before.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

DiCaprio is outstanding, as is the film's first hour. But Scorsese's tale of rats and the rat race gets its neck snapped in traps set by Nicholson's relapse into Just Jack, a flabby finish and a tonally wrong final wink.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

... managing to convey nothing for the mind or soul in its over two hours of excessive overkill.

Full Review | Original Score: C+

Suffers in comparison to the tension, subtlety, and top-drawer acting in Infernal Affairs.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

Neither a debacle nor a bore, The Departed works but only up to a point, and never emotionally.

Full Review

Much splat, little art

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Scorsese hurries through scenes with an impatience that suggests boredom. Spontaneous violence doesn't shock us anymore in Scorsese's environments. Even the director's reliable technicians let him down.

| Original Score: 2/4

Redolent of four-letter words, Scorsese's flatulent Boston massacre doesn't amount to a hill of beans ... It's easily his worst film since Cape Fear. How bad is GoodFellas Does Boston? So bad that even Nicholson is a deadly bore.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4

Despite its jazzy energy and many stunning set pieces, Scorsese's latest film is a regrettably uneven addition to the director's canon, paling in comparison to such classics as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas.

| Original Score: 2.5/4

as inflated with its own sense of epic destiny as the Hindenburg was with hydrogen and just as doomed

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

A sprawling crime drama that works, when it does work, mainly as a comedy. Convoluted, confusing and full of fat, the film cries out for a trimmed down version.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

There should be so many interesting dilemmas, but like the original Infernal Affairs, it muddles in standard mob deals and police investigations, nothing you can't see on any handful of TV shows. Why not give each side some painful decisions to mak

Full Review

This picture feels like an exercise by a Scorsese clone who has tackled the master's themes -- without his energy and economy of style.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

As so often before, the body count is high in a Martin Scorsese movie. But where once the bodies pulsated with life in all its vainglorious furor, here they drop like wooden ducks in an artificial pond.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

Crime stories have become incredibly generic, and though this is not a pit like Miami Vice, some bursts of good staging and imagery only serve to remind us that Scorsese is a streak gambler who can get stuck with the wrong hand.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

Is Scorsese desperate? This screenplay has the scent of it, as if he is scraping for material to feed his basic filmic interests.

Full Review

Though the story drags on longer than it probably should, Scorsese and his ensemble cast do an amazing job with staying faithful in their translation.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

The only thing that surprises me more than thinking the former Marky Mark is one of the most talented actors working today is that I think his New Kids on the Block brother Donnie is just as good.

| Original Score: 3.25/4

The Departed is Scorsese's most entertaining picture in years, dense, violent (more of his screen sadism played for laughs), and satisfying.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5