REVIEW: The Departed

93% of reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes gave The Departed Scorcese's Hollywood remake of Infernal Affairs positive marks. The usually tough Entertainment Weekly gave it an A-. Scorcese has finally done a good movie again, the critics say, not a failed masterpiece like The Aviator and Gangs of New York.

And for an hour, it appears The Departed has a worthy destination. Leo is crying and twitching and losing his nerve over being undercover with the mob for too long. He and Jack Nicholson are actually dropping their "r's" occasionally like Bostonians. The audience has likely erased the memory of Leo doing a brutal Dutch South African accent in the Blood Diamond trailer. We're all generally optimistic.

And then The Departed derails. Too much Matt Damon, who makes being a cop/mob informant seem like a boring desk job. Too much Jack Nicholson, who, for some reason, can't figure out that the informant is Dicaprio even though he 1) is the new guy, 2) used to be in the police, 3) the only person in Nicholson's crew that speaks full sentences, and 4) has two cell phones (one red, one silver)!

The end really devolves with Leo being DiCap-itated by another random mob informant in the police force (who has been on screen for about 3 seconds). And then, when the comic relief Mark Wahlberg magically shows up at Matt Damon's apartment and kills him and a rat literally crawls across the balcony railing as the camera pans out...I start to wonder how Scorcese has gotten away with all this bloated and amateurish dreck. And I haven't even covered the completely useless characters would have ended the cutting-room floor of just about any other disciplined director. Oh, right, he's Scorcese, that's why.

The Departed is 93% awful.