Dry Spell

I don’t know about you but in terms of blogging the past 2-3 weeks have been dry spell. Strange and funny thing is that a bunch of blogs that I read, mostly all of them by my friends, also have suddenly hit the same dry spell. Other than Mr A posting some video links :-) from YouTube and Google videos there were basically no postings. Anyway…

The Departed
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin

Awesome movie, a gripping mob flick with plenty of violence, bloodshed and twists and turns that has lots of people going “Scorsese is back!” Although probably not as good as Scorsese’s own “Goodfellas” but it comes really very close. Personally I thought it was a little long but apart from that the story and the acting are pretty good. Jack Nicholson as the mob boss is flawless. Almost everyone in the acting department is...

The story is about the mob and the cops infiltrating each other, sending their people under cover. Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) the boss of an Irish mob systematically puts his youngest and brightest man (Matt Damon) to infiltrate the police and rise in their ranks. At the same time two good cops (Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg) send their brightest cadet (Leonardo DiCaprio) to infiltrate the Irish mob. Both the undercover men do well as a cop and a gangster and quickly rise to the top, all the while passing critical information back to their people. Slowly both sides become painfully aware of the rats and then to make it worse become aware that there isn't just one rat in their group, that is when the movie picks up pace. Watching the rat become a thorn in the side of Jack Nicholson is really riveting. The cops and the mob spin circles around each other through their informants and find themselves frustrated time and time again. On the side both young men thrown in the fray find themselves struggling to tell apart the lies from the truth and at the same time having internal struggles with trust and loyalty.

Memorable quotes:
Dignam (Mark Wahlberg): Who am I? I'm the guy that does his ^$%#in' job! You must be the other guy!

by Frank Costello:
“One of us had to die. With me, it tends to be the other guy.”
“When I was growing up, they would say you could become cops or criminals. But what I'm saying is this...when you're facing a loaded gun, what's the difference?”
“I don't wanna be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me.”
This last one is very similar to the quote by George Bernard Shaw that goes “all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” So looks like whether you are a mob boss or a software engineer or anything else, to get ahead in life the same principle applies ;-)