Departure from Greatness

Caught The Departure at Cineleisure today. Honestly, the film fell short of my expectations, which was not helped by the brilliance of Infernal Affairs, on which The Departure was based on. It's just hard to recreate the intensity and style of the Hong Kong triads. Seriously guys, didn't everyone think Young and Dangerous series is one of the coolest gangster seriesof our time? Ekin Cheng & Jordan Chan baby! Wooooo! Never fails to get my blood pumping everytime I watch a re-run of it on TCS. They've milked the censored version of it till it's udders have run dry, and TCS has since sent it to the lush meadows of re-runs for retirement.

Maybe The Departure sucked for me because I kept comparing it to Infernal Affairs. Honestly, how does Leonardo Di Caprio match up to Tony Leong? Or Matt Damon to Andy Lau? No way in all 18 levels of hell man. Always thought gangs and triads were supposed to be sleek and sharp looking. The Boston gang headed by Jack Nicholson look more like a bunch of misfits than anything else. Seriously! Where's the image?

Then again, all that I've griped about is probably accurate to the time/place The Departure is set in. I'm probably the ignorant bigwit blasting the film for no good reason at all. Aiyar but it really wasn't that enjoyable for me. On hindsight, re-watching Infernal Affairs would have been a better choice.

Seriously though, I guess when movies state "based on blah blah blah etc" they actually mean "blatent plaguarism of blah blah blah etc". All movie advertising should rephrase that line. Copy then copy lah! No big deal.

Hmm..then again, what the hell am I doing writing about movies at 4am in the morn? Bloody hell...