The Departed
As if anyone cares, lately I have had “issues” with the Academy Awards. Here is another one. The Departed won the Best Picture award this year, and it won Martin Scorsese the Oscar for Best Director. Its loaded cast includes Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Sheen, Matt Damon, Alec Baldwin, and Mark Wahlberg. So I spent my 20 bucks to buy the movie, and settled in last night to watch this fine entertainment. American Beauty , the award winner for 1999, has met its match in the Mark Knows It All “How did it win the Oscar” turkey of the year contest. The plot is simple. The Irish Mafia places an informant in the Boston Police Department as the Boston Police Department simultaneously places an informant in the Irish Mafia. The tension centers on who is going to discover whom first. Even knowing the premise of the movie, it took me 45 minutes of this 2 ½ hour slog to begin to figure out who was whom. I spent a large part of the movie trying to explain it to my wife. Who?? What??