MovieComment

The Departed

Posted by Player under Drama

Martin Scorsese returns to his roots in The Departed, delivering the perfect crime drama. Undeniably the thing I love about Scorsese films is that his characters are real and the story always takes center stage. Most films today suffer from ridiculous story lines and mediocre acting, but The Departed has none of those problems.

The story centers around Boston crime boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), who helps Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), a neighborhood kid, to become a state police detective. On the other side is Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), who undoubtedly does not have the best of luck, when he is asked to infiltrate Costello’s gang. The parallels between Sullivan and Costigan are apparent, even though Sullivan came from nothing he ends up being a liar, while Costigan is the moral person, he has had to battle his demons every step of the way. Costella plays father figure to both of them.

If you were to pick a main theme for The Departed it would be deception. Throughout the film, the question of deception comes up repeatedly. Is it okay to lie? Is deception part of love? Is it material things that make the man? According to Nicholson’s best line in the film, nothing really matters when someone points a gun at you.

While Scorsese never seems to be interested in the female perspective, he does feature strong female characters in his films. Vera Farmiga’s role as Madolyn, the successful but unhappy psychiatrist, who gets involved with both Sullivan and Costigan is the only female main character in the film. Farmiga’s best scenes are with DiCaprio, whose brutal honesty persuades the calm psychiatrist to reveal her own emotional dilemmas.

In the end, The Departed is a violent look into a world of men who play cops and criminal roles, but who share the same emotional crisis. How they die is not as important as how they deal within their own deceptions.

Foxfire

Posted by Player under Drama

Foxfire is one of Angelina Jolie’s earlier films. The storyline tells the coming of age struggles of four young women whose lives change immediately after meeting a drifter named Legs (played by Angelina Jolie). At first the film seems to be like most mediocre films you see on Lifetime or worse an Afterschool movie, but Jolie’s performance manages to keep you interested. Legs is not only dangerous, she’s also quite genuine it seems. It is unfortunate that the film drifts into the same stereotype of lesbian love and rape themes that almost every female coming of age story ends up talking about. Perhaps these themes are important, but perhaps script writers use this theme as a crutch to make semi-boring storylines more interesting. In this case it made the film more ordinary and boring.

However, Foxfire is not quite as bad as watching The View. You still have some interesting characters and you still have Angelina Jolie. If you actually took all the characters and made them boys, it would actually work too. That is what I found interesting about Foxfire, the coming of age story was a little less girly than most other films. It’s just that they ruined it by throwing in a lesbian love story which wasn’t needed and which made the film too predictable.

Inside Man

Posted by Player under Drama

Inside Man, features the ever popular Clive Owen as a bank robber who takes over a New York City bank to steal something other than money. It is then up to Denzel Washington, who plays the smooth hostage negotiator to figure out what the bank robber’s intentions really are. Along the way though, Jodie Foster makes an appearance as a high priced broker known only as Miss White, who tries to manipulate the situation for the bank’s owner. In between all of this, director Spike Lee makes sure to paint a colorful portrait of New York City life, with all its racial tensions and candor. However Inside Man lacks action and though the dialogue is interesting, the film becomes too predictable and in some places even unbelievable.

Clive Owen is perhaps the most popular actor right now, and while he does deliver a few moments of his typical “man pushed too far” character, it is not enough to make this movie memorable. Even Denzel Washington seems to just be along for the ride and does not deliver anything exciting in his role. The only real surprise is Jodie Foster who plays a woman you love to hate. The C word is even used to describe Miss White, and I must admit that even though Foster is no longer the young actress in Silence of The Lambs, she looks impeccable and down right sexy. I look forward to Foster playing more villain type characters in the future.

Other critics found Inside Man too commercial and even dull, but it is a decent film and like most of Spike Lee’s other films, it is all New York City. Being from Chicago myself, that does not always work for me.

The Ballad of Jack and Rose

Posted by Player under Drama

One of the most controversial films I saw last year was The Ballad of Jack and Rose, where Daniel Day-Lewis plays an environmentalist who is raising his only daughter Rose (Camilla Belle) as best he can. But unlike the usual father-daughter movie, this story crosses the line of parental love as it becomes clear that Rose is in love with her father. Jack starts to realize that the life he has chosen may have damaged Rose and prevented her from having a normal life. Due to Jack’s health, he knows he does not have much time and so he persuades a woman he knows to move onto the island with him and Rose. However, the results prove to be disastrous to everyone involved.

Between the idealism of Jack and Rose’s innocence, there is something fragile to be said about this film. The performances by everyone involved are good, but the film’s underlying premise of the forbidden (although innocent) relationship between father and daughter proves to be too much for me, and somehow I do not believe Rebecca Miller (the director) pulled it off. The premise ends up being bigger than the film.