...it's nice to see the director back in stride with 2006's The Departed.
Best lines? From Costello to an old friend: "How's your mother?" "Ah, she's on her way out." "We all are," responds Costello. "Act Accordingly." Or this one from a fellow who's just had his kneecap shot off: "I thought I was supposed to go into shock. I'm not in shock. It f...ing hurts!"
Just beware: The screenplay contains even more f-words than it does flying bullets and dead bodies, and that's saying something. The movie is rated R for good reason.
Video:
Now, about the picture quality, starting with the SD version. In short, it's very good. The movie's original aspect ratio, 2.40:1, is here rendered at about 2.21:1 across my television, a pretty decent widescreen size. Then, using a very high bit rate, the WB engineers produce a fine anamorphic image. Colors are well delineated and reasonably natural, too, if sometimes a bit glossy and bright. Moreover, a fine grain gives the picture an added degree of texture. Cap all of this off with good object delineation, with very little blur or smear and only a touch of softness, and you get above-average video.
In HD-DVD the video quality is even better. In fact, it's almost as good a picture as I have ever seen on a high-definition disc. Sharpness and intensity is what we're talking about, and the HD image excels. In long shots it's enough to notice greater detail, depending on how intentionally well-focused the shot was filmed. In medium shots it's enough to see stronger, deeper colors standing out dramatically. And in close-ups, it's enough to be startling. You can see every hair on DiCapio's chin, every fiber in Damon's suit, every line around Nicholson's eyes. Compared to the SD image, the HD-DVD exhibits a crystalline clarity, with better contrasts in lighter and darker areas of the screen. If there is anything holding the video quality back from being a 10, it's that glossy brightness that I mentioned before displayed in some scenes, certainly not a defect in the HD transfer but a minor distraction from the overall reality of the picture.
Audio:
On the SD side, the Dolby Digital 5.1 sonics offer up very wide dynamics and very strong transient impact, making not only gunshots and punches to the head stand out vividly but rendering dialogue as clean and crisp as you could want it. Bass is deep when needed, but, surprisingly, there is little in the way of surround sound. The front speakers, left and right, handle ambient noises well enough, but there is little information fed to the rear channels. Nevertheless, when the surrounds are called upon to do their occasional work, they do it comfortably.
On the HD-DVD side, one has the choice of Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 or Dolby TrueHD 5.1. Although these high-definition audio formats offer tighter, better-controlled transient response and a slightly greater dynamic range than standard-definition audio, it is hard to tell the differences in this movie, even on direct A-B comparison with the SD disc. Despite its subject matter, most of the soundtrack of "The Departed" consists of dialogue and, in the background, older commercial pop and classical recordings, with little information in the surrounds. So there isn't a lot of audio material that benefits from the improvement. What I noticed most was the tauter bass response and the crisper dialogue, but it is hardly a night-and-day situation. What's more, I found the differences between the DD+ and TrueHD tracks almost unnoticeable, no matter how many times I kept going back and forth between them. Still, I listened in TrueHD throughout most of the film and, of course, enjoyed it immensely whether or not it was that much better than the alternatives.
Extras:
It's on the HD-DVD side that you'll find the extra material, all of it in standard definition and the greater part of it being about the director rather than about the film. First, there is a twenty-minute featurette, "Stranger Than fiction: The True Story of Whitey Bulger, Southie and the Departed." As I mentioned earlier, screenwriter William Monahan based much of his script for "The Departed" not only on "Infernal Affairs" but on the real-life gangster James "Whitey" Bulger, who terrorized South Boston for the better part of three decades in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s. Interestingly, in an interview with Bulger's priest, the priest says he had no idea Bulger was a killer. Uh-huh. After that is a twenty-four-minute featurette, "Crossing Criminal Cultures," in which Scorsese compares his gangster films with celebrated movies of an earlier time, like the old "Scarface," "Public Enemy," "Little Caesar," "The Roaring Twenties," and "White Heat." After that, there are nine deleted scenes, totaling nineteen minutes, each scene with its own introduction by Scorsese. Most of these scenes are pretty good, particularly an extended death scene, but in a film I already thought was too long, I can understand their deletion.
Both sides come with English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; English, French, and Spanish subtitles; thirty-seven scene selections; and a widescreen theatrical trailer. At the start-up of the SD disc, there are previews for "The Painted Veil," "The Reaping," and "Blood Diamond." As usual, the HD-DVD side also contains English captions for the hearing impaired, pop-up menus, an indicator of elapsed time, bookmarks, a zoom-and-pan feature, and an Elite Red HD case. I might add, too, that the high-definition side starts up directly into the movie, without the HD-DVD promo that WB included on their earlier discs.
Parting Thoughts:
"The Departed" is no "Goodfellas." It lacks the earlier film's raw energy and gutsy approach to mid-level gangsterism. But "The Departed" offers something else: Suspense. And not a little ambiguity. We really don't know who to root for at times, as Scorsese takes us ever closer to the criminal mind, forcing us to sympathize in a way with both hero and villain. Although "The Departed" does not quite make it into the highest echelon of Scorsese films occupied by the likes of "Goodfellas," "Taxi Driver," and "Raging Bull," it is the best thing the director has done in years. Just be sure to watch it in high definition and treat your eyes and ears to a bloody good feast.
Just beware: The screenplay contains even more f-words than it does flying bullets and dead bodies, and that's saying something. The movie is rated R for good reason.
Video:
Now, about the picture quality, starting with the SD version. In short, it's very good. The movie's original aspect ratio, 2.40:1, is here rendered at about 2.21:1 across my television, a pretty decent widescreen size. Then, using a very high bit rate, the WB engineers produce a fine anamorphic image. Colors are well delineated and reasonably natural, too, if sometimes a bit glossy and bright. Moreover, a fine grain gives the picture an added degree of texture. Cap all of this off with good object delineation, with very little blur or smear and only a touch of softness, and you get above-average video.
In HD-DVD the video quality is even better. In fact, it's almost as good a picture as I have ever seen on a high-definition disc. Sharpness and intensity is what we're talking about, and the HD image excels. In long shots it's enough to notice greater detail, depending on how intentionally well-focused the shot was filmed. In medium shots it's enough to see stronger, deeper colors standing out dramatically. And in close-ups, it's enough to be startling. You can see every hair on DiCapio's chin, every fiber in Damon's suit, every line around Nicholson's eyes. Compared to the SD image, the HD-DVD exhibits a crystalline clarity, with better contrasts in lighter and darker areas of the screen. If there is anything holding the video quality back from being a 10, it's that glossy brightness that I mentioned before displayed in some scenes, certainly not a defect in the HD transfer but a minor distraction from the overall reality of the picture.
Audio:
On the SD side, the Dolby Digital 5.1 sonics offer up very wide dynamics and very strong transient impact, making not only gunshots and punches to the head stand out vividly but rendering dialogue as clean and crisp as you could want it. Bass is deep when needed, but, surprisingly, there is little in the way of surround sound. The front speakers, left and right, handle ambient noises well enough, but there is little information fed to the rear channels. Nevertheless, when the surrounds are called upon to do their occasional work, they do it comfortably.
On the HD-DVD side, one has the choice of Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 or Dolby TrueHD 5.1. Although these high-definition audio formats offer tighter, better-controlled transient response and a slightly greater dynamic range than standard-definition audio, it is hard to tell the differences in this movie, even on direct A-B comparison with the SD disc. Despite its subject matter, most of the soundtrack of "The Departed" consists of dialogue and, in the background, older commercial pop and classical recordings, with little information in the surrounds. So there isn't a lot of audio material that benefits from the improvement. What I noticed most was the tauter bass response and the crisper dialogue, but it is hardly a night-and-day situation. What's more, I found the differences between the DD+ and TrueHD tracks almost unnoticeable, no matter how many times I kept going back and forth between them. Still, I listened in TrueHD throughout most of the film and, of course, enjoyed it immensely whether or not it was that much better than the alternatives.
Extras:
It's on the HD-DVD side that you'll find the extra material, all of it in standard definition and the greater part of it being about the director rather than about the film. First, there is a twenty-minute featurette, "Stranger Than fiction: The True Story of Whitey Bulger, Southie and the Departed." As I mentioned earlier, screenwriter William Monahan based much of his script for "The Departed" not only on "Infernal Affairs" but on the real-life gangster James "Whitey" Bulger, who terrorized South Boston for the better part of three decades in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s. Interestingly, in an interview with Bulger's priest, the priest says he had no idea Bulger was a killer. Uh-huh. After that is a twenty-four-minute featurette, "Crossing Criminal Cultures," in which Scorsese compares his gangster films with celebrated movies of an earlier time, like the old "Scarface," "Public Enemy," "Little Caesar," "The Roaring Twenties," and "White Heat." After that, there are nine deleted scenes, totaling nineteen minutes, each scene with its own introduction by Scorsese. Most of these scenes are pretty good, particularly an extended death scene, but in a film I already thought was too long, I can understand their deletion.
Both sides come with English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; English, French, and Spanish subtitles; thirty-seven scene selections; and a widescreen theatrical trailer. At the start-up of the SD disc, there are previews for "The Painted Veil," "The Reaping," and "Blood Diamond." As usual, the HD-DVD side also contains English captions for the hearing impaired, pop-up menus, an indicator of elapsed time, bookmarks, a zoom-and-pan feature, and an Elite Red HD case. I might add, too, that the high-definition side starts up directly into the movie, without the HD-DVD promo that WB included on their earlier discs.
Parting Thoughts:
"The Departed" is no "Goodfellas." It lacks the earlier film's raw energy and gutsy approach to mid-level gangsterism. But "The Departed" offers something else: Suspense. And not a little ambiguity. We really don't know who to root for at times, as Scorsese takes us ever closer to the criminal mind, forcing us to sympathize in a way with both hero and villain. Although "The Departed" does not quite make it into the highest echelon of Scorsese films occupied by the likes of "Goodfellas," "Taxi Driver," and "Raging Bull," it is the best thing the director has done in years. Just be sure to watch it in high definition and treat your eyes and ears to a bloody good feast.
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[release]20378[/release]