Movies
I'm a big movie fan. I love to watch movies. I love the escape and picking apart scenes. Right now I'm mid-way through Story and it references several well-known movies which I've never seen. With my husband out of town again, I rented 4 movies, two of which were talked about in Story: Chinatown and Platoon. When I was reading the sample scene from Chinatown in Story, the third draft was dated literally on my birthday, October 9, 1973. Cool! While I was being born, a great story was coming to fruition. So, of course, I had to rent this. I'm midway through it right now. I began watching it after Heroes last night and have found that I can't stay up like a used to. Ugh! So I'll have to report what I've learned from this and the other movies that I rented during my bachlorette week. However, I did see two awesome movies this weekend: The Departed and Stranger Than Fiction. I'll talk about The Departed in this blog.
The Departed: Gangster movies always fascinate me. Maybe it's the tough personas. The gritty action scenes. The psychology behind what it would take for someone to choose that way of life. To not give a damn about killing someone if it means securing your business and lifestyle. This movie chronicles two cops Billy Costigan (DiCaprio) and Colin Sullivan (Damon) as they work to take down Irish mob boss Frank Costello (played with fiendish delight by Nicholson). The conflict is set up at the very beginning when we are shown that clean-cut Sullivan is the double-agent groomed by Costello to be a cop, who has risen through the ranks to work on the state police's force trying to build a case against Costello. Costigan is a kid from a family of low-level thugs and thieves, who's trying to do the right thing by joing the police force. Because of his family's criminal background and links to Costello, Costigan is asked to infiltrate Costello's gang by becoming a member and reporting back to the police on his actions. Sullivan knows the police have rats planted inside Costello's gang but only the captain and his partner know their identities and are refusing to share them because they know there is a mole planted on their police force. The beauty of this movie is the psychological impact of each character's choices and their job. Costigan is driven to almost over the edge by trying to do the right thing as a cop, yet go along with Costello's crimes to stay close and keep up his thug appearance, all the while knowing that it's a matter of time before they realize he's a rat. Sullivan is under pressure from Costello to find out the names of the rats and is fighting to keep his boy scout persona, but this duplexity is causing him to unravel emotionally and physically (he can't perform for his girlfriend). Add to it that Costello knows there are rats in his group, so he becomes paranoid, not knowing whom he can trust. This is the set up for the movie in the very beginning. With f-bombs dropping and disturbing violence mixed into this tense bizarre crime triangle, Scorsese delivers a movie that keeps you on the edge until the very last bullet is shot.
The Departed: Gangster movies always fascinate me. Maybe it's the tough personas. The gritty action scenes. The psychology behind what it would take for someone to choose that way of life. To not give a damn about killing someone if it means securing your business and lifestyle. This movie chronicles two cops Billy Costigan (DiCaprio) and Colin Sullivan (Damon) as they work to take down Irish mob boss Frank Costello (played with fiendish delight by Nicholson). The conflict is set up at the very beginning when we are shown that clean-cut Sullivan is the double-agent groomed by Costello to be a cop, who has risen through the ranks to work on the state police's force trying to build a case against Costello. Costigan is a kid from a family of low-level thugs and thieves, who's trying to do the right thing by joing the police force. Because of his family's criminal background and links to Costello, Costigan is asked to infiltrate Costello's gang by becoming a member and reporting back to the police on his actions. Sullivan knows the police have rats planted inside Costello's gang but only the captain and his partner know their identities and are refusing to share them because they know there is a mole planted on their police force. The beauty of this movie is the psychological impact of each character's choices and their job. Costigan is driven to almost over the edge by trying to do the right thing as a cop, yet go along with Costello's crimes to stay close and keep up his thug appearance, all the while knowing that it's a matter of time before they realize he's a rat. Sullivan is under pressure from Costello to find out the names of the rats and is fighting to keep his boy scout persona, but this duplexity is causing him to unravel emotionally and physically (he can't perform for his girlfriend). Add to it that Costello knows there are rats in his group, so he becomes paranoid, not knowing whom he can trust. This is the set up for the movie in the very beginning. With f-bombs dropping and disturbing violence mixed into this tense bizarre crime triangle, Scorsese delivers a movie that keeps you on the edge until the very last bullet is shot.
posted by J.T. Bock at 9:05 AM
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