Gone For Good

Taking the day off, and not all that interested in Music To Remember Dead Blondes By, I sat down to watch The Departed. I had meant to see it in the cinema, like a lot of films in the past six or seven months.

I should go to the movies more often. People say it’s good for the shared experience, but there aren’t many people I want to share that experience with. Certainly not the great unwashed who spend their time scratching, yapping, and shoving food into their pie holes. And there’s always some twonk who hasn’t switched their bloody mobile off. So instead I wait for the shiny disc. And even then I don’t exactly rush to get my hands on it.

I’d been meaning to catch Infernal Affairs, which The Departed is based upon. Not I’m not too sure I can be that bothered. The two-and-a-half- hour running time certainly zipped by. But quite frankly the film felt a bit unsubstantial and rather inconsequential. There was an old B-movie feel to it, like something from the 1950s and 1960s where the stories got a lot meaner. This won the Academy Award for Best Picture? Interesting.

Anyway, before everyone ends up taking a round to the head – at one point they were toppling like dominoes – there was a beautiful little moment in the Beantown bar Nicholson’s Frank Costello frequented, just after Mr French – who certainly knew when it was time to make his exit – roughs Billy Costigan up to see whether he’s a Statie.

Costello asks one of the guys propping up the bar who his mother is. The news isn’t great and he tells him that she’s on the way out. Costello replies, “We all are, act accordingly.” Just beautiful.