The Departed

The much-vaunted return to form for Martin Scorsese, The Departed, has winner written all over it from the production, direction and cast yet it just falls short somehow.
With a cast including Jack Nicholson, who is in his usual brilliant form, Martin Sheen, Mark Walhberg, Matt Damon (great to see him in a different role to his usual), Alec Baldwin and Leonardo Di Caprio, if the film wasn't any good you'd have to wonder why.
With the pivotal role of Bill Costigan, the movie's success rests on Di Caprio's performance and he delivers big time. As a fan of his earlier movies like Gilbert Grape and the Basketball Diaries, it was excellent to see him in that kind of form.
I possibly went in expecting a non-stop tour de force that was going to blow me away so that didn't help in the end. The good thing was at 150 minutes the movie didn't feel overly long, and the pace was pretty frantic, so that's always a positive.
While there will probably be Oscar nominations coming from this, the large amount of language was a bit of a turn off. For one or two characters every second word was colourful. I'm not offended as such but wonder how necessary it is. Given the nature of the world in which the movie is set, though, one should expect there do be plenty of expletives.
This film won't rank among the top five for the year but it was well made, very well acted and entertaining. A 7.5 out of 10.