The Departed ***

The pedigree of this film alone is impressive, between its all-star cast and director Martin Scorsese. And everyone I saw this film with loved it. So I'm not sure exactly why I was a bit underwhelmed. Maybe I was expecting too much. But while I thought it was a decent film, I wasn't blown away by it.

The film follows the lives of a handful of Bostonians involved on both sides of the law, and the efforts of the police force's undercover unit to infiltrate the local mob. The script has a lot of great lines, lots of good snappy retorts and putdowns. The plot itself is somewhat complicated but not overly so. However, I did find it a little hard to get into the story. The acting was pretty good for the most part, though some of the Boston accents did seem to fade in and out (most notably, and surprisingly, on Martin Sheen, who's played both JFK and RFK).

I can't really put my finger on why I didn't get sucked into the film more and thus rate it higher. Maybe my attention was spread too thin amongst all the characters and I didn't really latch on to any one in particular. Whatever the reason, I thought it was only a decent film, but that seems to be a minority opinion. I guess I was expecting something a lot better, and instead of a great film, this turned out to be "only" a good one. Still worth a look if you get a chance.