On my flight to Calgary, I ended up watching The Departed. The Departed is based on the Chinese movie, Infernal Affairs which I watched a few years ago.

I remember when the English version came out, there was a lot of hype surrounding it, but I didn’t find it as good of a movie as the Chinese version (even though I didn’t quite remember the story after all this time so it was fairly “new” to me). The major points are the same, two people are undercover in the police and gangs respectively. They try and find each other, and a psychiatrist is involved.

After watching it, I struggled to understand why I was not as impressed with the Hollywood version. I think it’s because the English version placed emphasis on individual characters, whereas the Chinese version was more theme driven. The Departed had a long list of well-known male actors which perhaps distracted and prejudiced my opinion of the character that they played. Secondly, there was a lot of focus on the individual actions of the two leads – perhaps this was to make the movie more thrilling. I think the Chinese version focused on loyalty and by limiting the scope, made it a more compelling story. Either that or I have a cultural bias. In any case, I give The Departed three out of five stars.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: moviereview