The Departed v.s. Infernal Affairs
I finally watched The Departed. It's always hard to objectively evaluate a remake of a movie you love, which of course is what The Departed is.
I'm a big fan of the first Infernal Affairs, the 2002 Hong Kong movie that The Departed is based on. If you haven't seen Infernal Affairs, please don't judge it on the English title. The Chinese title, Wujiandao 無間道, purports to refer to a level of Buddhist hell, and has to do with there being no escape. That title is even more appropriate to the HK movie than the American one.
It has to be said that The Departed is a better-made movie. The production value is way higher, and the feel of the movie is much grittier and less comic-booky. One of my complaints about Infernal Affairs was its overcooked, melodramatic sensibilities. So kudos to Martin Scorsese for that, I guess. The characters of the psychiatrist and girlfriend (which were merged in The Departed), were especially stupid in Lau Wai-keung's film. Scorsese's depictions of the mob stuff, the violence, etc., are also much better (duh). And importantly, a lot of little things that were hard to catch in Infernal Affairs were much clearer and more explicit in The Departed. That might have to do with having watched Infernal Affairs with subtitles, though.
Although Scorsese still doesn't fix what for me is the second-most-irritating (after the psychiatrist/girlfriend) aspect of Infernal Affairs-i.e., the failure to provide an obvious motivation for Tony Leung/Leonardo DiCaprio to dash out of Andy Lau/Matt Damon's office when he sees the envelope. Some people don't mind this sort of thing, but the movie has enough little hard-to-follow twists that I wasn't sure whether I'd missed something, whether Leo/Tony's character was just being stupid (if so, it should have been signaled to the audience), or whether the film itself was being stupid. In any case, it was irritating distraction for me, and right before the end, just when all the background noise is supposed to have fallen away.
But I can deal with that (I guess). The end of both movies is powerful enough that I got over it pretty quickly.
That said, the end of The Departed managed to lose a lot of the emotional punch of the supposedly cheesier, cheaper, less steadfastly serious Infernal Affairs. I'm not exactly sure why, but I wasn't nearly as sad when Leo got a forehead full of lead as when Tony ate it, though the elevator scene in The Departed was done much better. The same for a lot of the movie, actually. In terms of individual scenes, there's no question that The Departed is usually better (though not necessarily better in all aspects). But when there's all put together, I still stand by Infernal Affairs.
I think that this is at least partly due to the characterizations. One great thing about Infernal Affairs was how everyone was subordinate to the two leads, Leung and Lau. In The Departed, we get wa~~~y too much Jack Nicholson. Not in terms of screen time, but in terms of hey-look-at-this-crazy-mother-fucker. E.g., the cocaine scene. I also think there's too much of an effort to tell us about Leonardo's character's complex psychological profile, and not nearly enough on on showing it. The telling/showing thing is an old hat, but it's true in this case. Before I saw the movie, I thought DiCaprio would be a great choice for his part, but I'm not so sure anymore.
Oh, and Martin Sheen is nowhere near as cool as Anthony Wong.
Another area I thought Infernal Affairs was better was the tension. There was a tremendous sense of danger throughout the entire film that was just missing in The Departed. Think of the scene with the drug deal / computer-chip deal. The HK version has Tony Leung tapping at this window in Morse code with his cast still on. It goes on throughout the entire deal. In The Departed, he just sends off one message from his cell phone, and no one even glances over. True, Jack Nicholson had done a great job breaking the cast earlier, but when Leung's cast gets smashed after the drug deal goes bad, there was a sense that he might be about to get it (thought obviously he wasn't). True, it's sort of a cheap trick-make the audience think the transmitter is in cast when it's not-but why couldn't Scorsese do better?
I'm a big fan of the first Infernal Affairs, the 2002 Hong Kong movie that The Departed is based on. If you haven't seen Infernal Affairs, please don't judge it on the English title. The Chinese title, Wujiandao 無間道, purports to refer to a level of Buddhist hell, and has to do with there being no escape. That title is even more appropriate to the HK movie than the American one.
It has to be said that The Departed is a better-made movie. The production value is way higher, and the feel of the movie is much grittier and less comic-booky. One of my complaints about Infernal Affairs was its overcooked, melodramatic sensibilities. So kudos to Martin Scorsese for that, I guess. The characters of the psychiatrist and girlfriend (which were merged in The Departed), were especially stupid in Lau Wai-keung's film. Scorsese's depictions of the mob stuff, the violence, etc., are also much better (duh). And importantly, a lot of little things that were hard to catch in Infernal Affairs were much clearer and more explicit in The Departed. That might have to do with having watched Infernal Affairs with subtitles, though.
Although Scorsese still doesn't fix what for me is the second-most-irritating (after the psychiatrist/girlfriend) aspect of Infernal Affairs-i.e., the failure to provide an obvious motivation for Tony Leung/Leonardo DiCaprio to dash out of Andy Lau/Matt Damon's office when he sees the envelope. Some people don't mind this sort of thing, but the movie has enough little hard-to-follow twists that I wasn't sure whether I'd missed something, whether Leo/Tony's character was just being stupid (if so, it should have been signaled to the audience), or whether the film itself was being stupid. In any case, it was irritating distraction for me, and right before the end, just when all the background noise is supposed to have fallen away.
But I can deal with that (I guess). The end of both movies is powerful enough that I got over it pretty quickly.
That said, the end of The Departed managed to lose a lot of the emotional punch of the supposedly cheesier, cheaper, less steadfastly serious Infernal Affairs. I'm not exactly sure why, but I wasn't nearly as sad when Leo got a forehead full of lead as when Tony ate it, though the elevator scene in The Departed was done much better. The same for a lot of the movie, actually. In terms of individual scenes, there's no question that The Departed is usually better (though not necessarily better in all aspects). But when there's all put together, I still stand by Infernal Affairs.
I think that this is at least partly due to the characterizations. One great thing about Infernal Affairs was how everyone was subordinate to the two leads, Leung and Lau. In The Departed, we get wa~~~y too much Jack Nicholson. Not in terms of screen time, but in terms of hey-look-at-this-crazy-mother-fucker. E.g., the cocaine scene. I also think there's too much of an effort to tell us about Leonardo's character's complex psychological profile, and not nearly enough on on showing it. The telling/showing thing is an old hat, but it's true in this case. Before I saw the movie, I thought DiCaprio would be a great choice for his part, but I'm not so sure anymore.
Oh, and Martin Sheen is nowhere near as cool as Anthony Wong.
Another area I thought Infernal Affairs was better was the tension. There was a tremendous sense of danger throughout the entire film that was just missing in The Departed. Think of the scene with the drug deal / computer-chip deal. The HK version has Tony Leung tapping at this window in Morse code with his cast still on. It goes on throughout the entire deal. In The Departed, he just sends off one message from his cell phone, and no one even glances over. True, Jack Nicholson had done a great job breaking the cast earlier, but when Leung's cast gets smashed after the drug deal goes bad, there was a sense that he might be about to get it (thought obviously he wasn't). True, it's sort of a cheap trick-make the audience think the transmitter is in cast when it's not-but why couldn't Scorsese do better?