The Departed The Rewatchables
The Departed poster
The Departed

What’s Aged the Worst?

Opening background montage; the final rat; Gimme Shelter reuse; blind pocket texting; microprocessors plot device; cocaine opera scene; bad Boston accents; Nicholson's race monologue, dildo and Red Sox hat refusal; confusing final shootout; New York standing in for Boston; nonexistent State House view

In the discussion (19)
Approx. transcript time · 00:58:30Read transcript
  • The opening background montage is held for this category: it does not work, feels like a different movie, and could be cut from a two-and-a-half-hour film since a later line does the work.
  • Nicholson is saved for last; Nicholson running has aged both best and worst.
  • The rat is disliked, and the body on the floor in the reverse shot is not Damon; nobody told Scorsese no in 2006, likened to their own Miami Vice pod.
  • A requested defense of the rat, not fully believed: in a maximalist movie it is the final maximalist note, meaning corruption rises to the top and betrayal lives on in institutions; the reply is that a cool crime movie does not need a grand statement.
  • Flip phones as a central character are listed, but also called a nice time capsule.
  • Walberg's hair: joking speculation that this was the last movie before he found a hair guy, with a Tom Brady comparison, explicitly labeled speculation; a defense of Irish hair becoming a bouffant applies to the character, not Walberg.
  • Gimme Shelter used a third time after Goodfellas and Casino, looped three times here; it is defended as an intentional sonic-barrage motif as in Wolf, but his earlier uses were more precise and the song became a cliche and crutch.
  • Damon texting blind in his pocket on T9 would never happen with an iPhone.
  • The microprocessors plot device is questioned; it should have been a drugs and guns movie, though it may exist to justify FBI interest, as in early The Wire.
  • The cocaine opera scene is bonkers with no explanation, possibly Nicholson wanting to have fun, or showing Costello as Satan and a pure hedonist.
  • Bad Boston accents: Leo is okay, Baldwin is a Long Island-Boston hybrid; the bad ones include Vera, who abandons hers after an hour, and Martin Sheen, whose lifer character needed it.
  • Nicholson items: the race monologue should have been cut, the porn theater dildo is inexplicable, and he refused to wear a Red Sox hat and banned them on set in a Boston gangster movie despite killing people onscreen.
  • Whether Whitey Bulger wore a Red Sox hat is questioned; Nicholson may wear a Yankee hat in one scene; a joke that someone in Costello's crew would shoot him over it.
  • Found a photo of Whitey Bulger wearing a Red Sox hat. — Craig Horlbeck
  • The shootout that kills Costello is spatially confusing, and some cutting misfires, such as blood exploding from Sheen before he hits the ground.
  • It is not really Boston: they shot only a couple weeks there, and the Chinatown chase is obviously New York.
  • Costello's scheme to confirm Billy is not the rat is unimpressive, a plot flaw.
  • John Lennon's "Well Well Well" plays and then Nicholson opens a John Lennon speech, called ridiculous though entertaining.
  • The State House view from the condo in the last shot does not exist, since Beacon Hill is surrounded by buildings and trees; tied to an old Blown Away complaint about bastardized Boston geography.