On Saturday, I saw the movie The Departed which is basically the Americanized version of the very successful Hong Kong crime movie Infernal Affairs.
Most people I know who haven't seen the original loved it. Most people who have seen the original thought the original was much better.
While it's been long enough since I've seen Infernal Affairs that I don't remember the details, I remembered enough of it to note some of the similarities and differences.
Spoiler warning - stop here if you plan on seeing it.
In short, The Departed was stretched out too long. They should have ended it much earlier when Castigan came in to the station to get his money and move on with his life. They both know who each other is, and the audience would be like "ooh, you can't bail out of this mess that easily" or something. Maybe there could have been a sequel. Or not, it doesn't matter. It's just a cool place to end it.
Americans films seem to be obsessed with making a storyline where everything's tied up neatly in a bundle at the end with the good guys winning and the bad guys losing. Sure, some movies do a good job at leading themselves into a satisfying but vague open ending (like X-Men 3) and some movies do a shitty job at it (Pirates of the Carribean 2). But all in all, most Hollywood movies tend to do the "and they live happily ever after" crap cuz it sorta defines the American storybook.
And so they stretched it out the movie much longer than they needed to by killing a bunch of people off just so the good guys can have the last man standing? Sullivan knew in the end he's been a bad guy for a while, but he was actually trying to go to the good side. Killing him off was kind of a waste. Same with the extra bodies at the elevator.
The one thing I thought was kinda poetic was how Costello basically did it all to have some sort of legacy. It wasn't about the money, as he mentions he had enough. It was about having somebody he could treat as his children. And if that fails, having some sort of impact that people would remember him by despite being overall a bad guy.
Oh well, if you don't remember the original, I guess it's still worth a watch. But yeah, they could have done a better job editing it.
Posted by hachu at October 23, 2006 11:56 PMI watched the original with two losers
Posted by: rog at October 24, 2006 08:06 PM