The trailer for Martin Scorsese’s crime drama The Departed has gone live online and despite the film somewhat puzzlingly not playing at the Toronto Film Festival — the
preeminent staging ground for early fall studio Oscar hopefuls — expect
a huge promotional push from distributor Warner Bros., which I’m hearing really likes its
chances with the movie as a star-laden, overtly commercial slice of
genre pie, despite some production overruns and editing room difficulties.
Set in South Boston, the film is of course an Americanized update of the 2002 Hong Kong import Infernal Affairs,
starring Andy Lau and Tony Leung, about at-odds twentysomethings, one
of whom is an undercover cop assigned to infiltrate a criminal
syndicate, and the other of whom is a police officer who’s really a
mole for said racket. Leonardo DiCaprio is Billy Costigan, the undercover operative, and Matt Damon is Colin Sullivan, who feeds information to Jack Nicholson’s gangland honcho. Mark Wahlberg, Vera Farmiga, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Ray Winstone and Anthony Anderson also star.
The accents are all ladled on pleasantly thick, the camerawork looks smooth and in constant motion, Nicholson does his trademark raised-eyebrows-and-lowered-head thing… basically,
this is a trailer that whets existent appetites and delivers upon
expectations if not completely wows, though it does achieve a certain
swooping if mannered grandeur courtesy of its use of that Pink Floyd
tune “Comfortably Numb.” Good times. You can check it out in Quicktime by clicking here.