“Martin Scorsese‘s The Departed clocks in at two and a half hours, yet it’s two and a half hours of jabber and jolt, and [with] enough color for ten crime pictures. It works smashingly. There’s no mercy — not even for the audience. William Monahan‘s dialogue is Mamet-speak played at Alvin and the Chipmunks speed with a broad Boston accent.
“While characters spit yahmuthahfuckedme expletives into one another’s faces (along with peculiar citations of Shakespeare, Freud, and James Joyce), Scorsese and his fab house editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, drive the action brusquely. They can hardly sit still in the present; they leap around in time, splintering a moment into its antecedent and aftermath. They chuck in random splattery head shootings and bashings — like demitasses of espresso in the middle of a long road trip.” — from David Edelstein ‘s review, the best-written about this film yet, in New York magazine.
The wheel is turning, turning. All the top critics are creaming all over this thing. Maybe this Boston crime movie about nothing especially rich or dimensional except for its own brilliant moves is a Best Picture finalist waiting to happen — it’s got a 100% rating so far on Rotten Tomatoes and a 93% rating on Metacritic.