Genre: Crime / Drama
Rating: R
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, & Kristen Dalton
Released: 2006

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This is a movie that was much anticipated. Plenty of my friends & colleagues have already seen this movie and was thoroughly enjoyed, thus raising my expectations of this film to nearly a Goodfellas/Raging Bull level. The film is a remake of the film Mou Gaan Dou (I think this translates to Internal Affairs). Both films have similar storylines in which the police and the gang are trying to infiltrate each other in order to gain an edge on the other. It is an original rehash of the gangster genre.

As I said earlier, I had very high expectations for this movie. After a disappointing Gangs of New York, Scorsese came back with the Aviator which I enjoyed. This movie needed to build on the strong character development techniques of his previous films in order for me to say that this was a great film, but I couldn?t get that out of this film. The beginning was drawn out and revealed very little about the characters in the process. That does not mean that we do not learn about the characters, we do, but the film was already progresses into the action scenes before we learn too much.

With that said, the film becomes very engaging after about a half hour. It leaves just enough twists and violence to leave you at the edge of your seat. In the end, it was sad to see people on both sides of the story to kick the bucket, thus making me realize that the characters developed properly by the end. Overall, this was a good film, but could have used another round of edits and the plot was a bit thin. I think Scorsese could not quite decide on whether it should be a drama or an action and ended up with a great action, but mediocre drama.