THE ILLUSIONIST: Seeing is believing - or is it?

THE ILLUSIONIST will have you doubting the evidence of your own eyes. Only too late will you realise that nothing is what it seems to be; that no one is to be trusted, and everything must be questioned.

This is a film that requires a second viewing to really get to grips with the story. The first time around you’ll find yourself to be little more than a passenger on a brightly coloured ride that is entrancing and engaging but moving so quickly that it gives no time to properly absorb all that you are seeing.

Set in Vienna in the late 1800s, the film stars Edward Norton as Eisenheim the Illusionist. He is the David Copperfield of his day, and his stage show is the hottest ticket in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He can make a human soul appear, he can separate a person from their reflection in the mirror, and he can grow an orange tree from a pip in seconds flat. To call them mere magic tricks is to grossly belittle his talent.

These breathtaking illusions attract the attention of Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell), heir to the throne and engaged to be married to Sophie, the Duchess von Teschen, played by a cast against type Jessica Biel. She just happens to be Eisenheim’s long lost childhood sweetheart, and they resume their romance, unaware that they are being spied on by Chief Inspector Walter Uhl (Paul Giamatti).

He reports everything he sees to the Crown Prince. Leopold is a man used to getting what he wants and orders the Chief Inspector to destroy Eisenheim. But Uhl wavers in the task, torn between his duty to his political patron and his fascination for Eisenheim’s illusions. A battle of wills develops between the three men which leads to murder and a shocking revenge.

THE ILLUSIONIST is a beautiful looking film. Every frame is infused with a golden glow, giving it the feel of one of those big budget hand-tinted silent movie spectaculars that Hollywood used to turn out in the 1920s. This glow washes over the wonderfully preserved buildings and streets of Prague (standing in for 1890s Vienna) to give the story an impressively authentic feel.

The beauty of the visuals is complemented by an understated yet classy music soundtrack, written by renowned composer Philip Glass.

This film’s other two big plus points are its stars. Edward Norton is the Robert de Niro of his

generation. He is a similarly chameleon-like actor, immersing himself completely in the part of Eisenheim, while Giamatti is undoubtedly one of Hollywood’s most talented character stars. This is certainly not the best film either of them has ever appeared in, but it is a much better movie because of their presence in it.

THE ILLUSIONIST has a lot going for it but, unfortunately, the sum of the parts does not add up to a satisfying whole. While the ambiguity in the story is acceptable – are we really seeing what we think we are seeing? – the implausibility of the plot is harder to swallow. Much of this is masked on first viewing by the speed at which the story unfolds, but even then chances are that you will be left with a faint feeling of dissatisfaction that you can’t quite put your finger on.

Ultimately, THE ILLUSIONIST’s most effective illusion is the movie itself. By lavishing so much attention on the look of the film, Director Neil Burger has created a story that appears to be more entertaining and carefully constructed than it actually is. THE ILLUSIONIST is certainly not a bad film, but if more care had been paid to the content of the story it could have been a so much more satisfying a viewing experience.

ANOTHER TIME ANOTHER PLACE: and another godawful melodrama

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what is the most ridiculous thing about this 1958 Paramount melodrama - Sean Connery's spectacular eyebrows or the notion of Lana Turner as an ace war correspondent.
She plays Sara Scott, one of those movie journalists who remains gainfully employed despite never

letting work get in the way of their personal life. She swans around wartime London in a fur coat, perfectly coiffed and oblivious to the realities of modern warfare although, to be fair, it's not difficult for her not to notice when director Lewis Allen has chosen to mostly omit it from the mise-en-scene. Other than a sequence showing sappers defusing an unexploded V2 rocket, and Scott's hired help making a passing reference to rationing, there's no indication that this is a city that's been at war for nearly 6 years. There's no bombed out buildings, no indication of food, gas or clothing shortages, and barely anyone in uniform on the streets.
As a peroxide blonde society lady who spends her time lunching, loving and shopping on 5th Avenue, Turner is entirely convincing. As a highly rated journalist ready to fly off at a moment's notice to whichever battle front her editor deems her presence and writing talents to be essential, she's somewhat less plausible than Steven Seagal tackling Shakespeare.
Which brings us to Mr Connery's eyebrows. They are both a wonder and a mystery and put Robert Pattinson's brow hair to shame. His are wider but inexpressive and just sit there above his eyes. Connery's, in contrast, are longer and undulate like two strips of dark brown deep shag carpeting strapped to the back of a couple of adult earthworms. They're so impressive they actually distract attention from his luxuriant head of hair which to anyone used to the older, more follically challenged Connery, is a talking point in itself.
ANOTHER TIME ANOTHER PLACE was not the 28 year old's first movie but it was the first time his name had been billed in such close proximity to the film's stars, and clearly no one had considered that a little personal grooming might be in order to reflect his new status as love interest to a bona fide Hollywood star. His agent might also have found a tactful way to suggest that having Connery's character, with his distinct Scottish accent, wax lyrical at great length about his idyllic home town on the coast of Cornwall, might not be the most convincing.
But even shifting location and pruning his eyebrows would not have prevented this turgid drama from dissolving into a pool of smelly sludge. Nothing about it rings true and no one does anything to evince our interest or sympathy. It's just a bust.

MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES: at least five hundred of them in shadow

When James Cagney was cast as legendary silent film star Lon Chaney in 1957 he was 58 years old. That made him 11 years old than Chaney when he died of cancer in 1930.
Which posed a formidable challenge - how to make a very middle-aged Cagney look credible when portraying Chaney as a young man.
Director Joseph Pevney's solution was to shoot Cagney almost exclusively in long-shot for three quarters of the movie and also in shadow. Not artistically lit or subtle shadow, mind you. These shadows are big and black and blot out Cagney's face. They're the kind of obscuring shadows that would have the director screaming "cut! cut! CUT!!" on any other film and then chewing out the cameraman in front of the whole crew for lighting the scene so ineptly.
There is no reason for these shadows other than to obscure Cagney's features. They do nothing to create or enhance mood, or convey a message. These are shadows that put the worst of film noir to shame.
On the couple of occasions when Pevney attempts something resembling a medium close-up he overlights Cagney's face, clumsily but effectively burning out any detail including his wrinkles.
But Pevney's not simply a two or even three trick pony when it comes to concealing the ravages of time. He also has Cagney play several scenes in thick clown face make-up - because that's what we remember Chaney for. You might think that a biopic of Hollywood's first great horror actor might focus the bulk of its attention on recreating those years and films, but MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES spends an inordinate amount of its overlong running time bringing us up to speed on Chaney's vaudeville career. I'm not
doubting that it was an important training ground but do we really need to see the dancing clown routine more than once?
Actually, if it weren't for Pevney's hamfisted efforts to obscure Cagney's inappropriateness for the part, this film would have very little to recommend it. If writer Ralph Wheelwright's account is to believed (and from some sources I've read it might not be), Chaney's personal life was a little on the turbulent side, but the way it plays out here is so flat, unimaginative and uninspired that it's a chore to stick with it.
Within the limitations previously discussed, Cagney gives a good account of himself,  demonstrating his versatility as an actor and a hoofer while suppressing most of the Cagneyisms that characterized many of his performances. But not for one moment did he lose himself in the part, and that meant I never shook the feeling that I was watching him playing a part rather than watching him become the part.

THEY MADE ME A CRIMINAL: and they made Claude look very very silly

Plenty has been written about Warner Bros' 1939 release THEY MADE ME IN CRIMINAL in the context of what it did for the young John Garfield's fledgling film career. But considerably less attention has been paid to the monumental miscasting of one of his more established co-stars.
I refer to the suave, silken-voiced Claude Rains.

Unlike Garfield, Rains was by 1939 a known quantity to Warner Bros and cinemagoers. He'd made an immediate impact 6 years earlier in the title role of 'The Invisible Man' where his distinctive, British-accented, voice had been used to great effect in the many scenes where Rains was present but not seen due to his invisibility. Since that debut Rains had played Frenchmen ('Hearts Divided'), Russians ('Stolen Holiday') and Italians ('Anthony Adverse') all to reasonable effect and, indeed, he was destined to secure his place in movie history playing French police officer Captain Louis Renault in 'Casablanca', but the one part that was most definitely not within his range was that of a New York City born and bred cop.
What on earth director Busby Berkeley and Warner Bros were thinking when they cast Rains as Detective Phelan remains a mystery but they clearly were not thinking straight. They had a studio full of character actors capable of playing the part so why did they give it to the most unsuitable man on the lot?!
Rains, puffing furiously on a limp cigarette, tries his best with the colloquial, slangy, tough-guy dialogue but never gets anywhere close to halfway convincing. Lines like "That makes no difference to me - see - I'm a cop. I gotta do me duty whether I like it or not" and "That's a swell looking dame you're leaving behind kid. I feel kinda sorry for you" fall so unnaturally and uncomfortably from his lips that it's embarrassing to witness.
The Rains casting fiasco aside, THEY MADE ME A CRIMINAL is a solid, production and a fine example of Warners scrappy 1930s house style. In only his second film, the 26 year old Garfield radiates star quality as Johnnie Bradfield, a young boxer who goes on the run in the mistaken belief

that he's killed a man in a drunken brawl. If you're not familiar with Garfield's work this film is a fine place to start. All the elements that contributed to his 40s screen persona are already present - the tough, cocky, streetwise underdog battling against the fate that society and his own impulsiveness has preordained for him.
The film also showcases Ann Sheridan, another rising Warner Brothers' star, and she succeeds in grabbing our attention with the brief amount of screen time she's allowed. In hindsight it would have made more sense for her to have switched roles with Gloria Dickson, but perhaps the smaller (though more prominently billed) part was the only way she could cram THEY MADE ME A CRIMINAL into her schedule of six films in 1939. May Robson is also a delight as the salt of the earth Grandma Rafferty who's foster-mom to a bunch of transplanting teenage New York delinquents, played by the Dead End Kids, although their bickering, head slapping and shoving shtick was already starting to grate a little.
Not quite an A movie but considerably more than just another run of the mill Warner Bros B movie, it's Garfield's magnetic presence that makes this film a must-see for anyone seriously interested in 1930s and 40s Hollywood cinema.

NAKED ALIBI: caution - film may not deliver on promises inherent in title

I'm not sure how Universal slipped this one past the Bureau of Consumer Protection, but they did.
Despite the title's bold claim, this 1954 crime drama features absolutely no nudity or alibis - clothed or unclothed.

On the plus side, it does co-star the deliciously sexy Gloria Grahame, but on the minus side it's a very poorly written part which does nothing to showcase her particular talents.
She plays Marianna, a saloon singer in a sleazy town on the US side of the Mexican border, who manages to get herself involved with both an ex-cop (Sterling Hayden) and the suspected cop-killer (Gene Barry) he is obsessively pursuing.
Even by the often convoluted standards of film noir (which this movie aspires to be) plotting, the story makes little sense, but there's little else to distract the attention. Hayden sleepwalks through his part with the air of an actor focusing on his paycheck rather than the script's obvious flaws, while Barry struggles unsuccessfully to create some sort of plausible whole out of the many inconsistencies in his character. In one scene he's a baker and family man wrongly accused by bullying detectives of murdering an officer, and in the next he's a big shot gangster (without a gang or criminal purpose) on the Mexican border, splashing the cash, roughing up the locals, and inflicting his particularly aggressive brand of lovin' on Miss Grahame.
Quite how or why he leads this double life doesn't trouble director Jerry Hopper. In fact, very little seems to bother Mr Hopper. Not the implausible plot, the waste of talent (Grahame and Hayden) or the film's slapped-together-on-a-shoestring feel. NAKED ALIBI was shot in large part on the Universal backlot and it looks it. The town square will be instantly recognisable from countless other movies made by the studio, while the border town's back alleys and loading docks are littered with those empty wooden crates one only ever sees in such large numbers in low budget movies where they're trying to fill in the space without spending money on props. Production values are so low that NAKED ALIBI plays more like a lacklustre 1950s tv drama than a big screen entertainment.
If Hopper thought he was contributing to the often stylish and memorable canon of low-budget film noir thrillers which many studios turned out in the early 1950s he was wrong. The confused plot, unimaginative camera-work and cast going through the motions put paid to that. For the Gloria Grahame completists among us this is a must-see, for everyone else there's plenty of other, much more rewarding things, you could be doing with your time.

WE'RE THE MILLERS: that's absolutely nothing to brag about

REALLY?!
Jason Sudekis quit Saturday Night Live for a career making garbage like WE'RE THE MILLERS?
This film is so godawfully unfunny it makes SNL look like an episode of Frasier or Friends or Seinfeld or ..... well, you know, one of those genuinely laugh-out-loud funny tv comedies.
The red flags were clearly visible long before Sudekis stepped before the cameras for the first time.
Even if he hadn't read the script he would have known he would be co-starring alongside Jennifer
Aniston, and who among us is old enough to recall the last time she starred in a film that left you feeling like you'd got your money's worth?
All that pre-release hullabaloo about Aniston playing a stripper who actually strips down, says dirty words, and gives her pretend son a lap dance was just so much pr baloney. Sure she strips down to

lacy underwear which reveals precisely nothing (and looks especially un-alluring in the process), but she's no longer the adorable young Rachel Green of 'Friends' fame. She's kept herself fit but she can't disguise that weird heads grows larger thing that tends to happen to people when they reach middle-age, and a definite whiff of desperation clings to her performance.
Sudekis is adequate at best but lacks the comedy chops to wring anything memorable or truly amusing out of a lame script which makes barely a token effort at creating anything resembling a coherent storyline.
As I write this WE'RE THE MILLERS has just passed the $100 million dollar mark at the US box office. This sorry state of affairs suggests one of two things - either US audiences are so starved of quality comedy entertainment that they'll grab at anything that's put in front of them, or - sadly what's more likely - Hollywood has finally attained its ultimate goal - achieved thru years of churning out increasingly bland Aniston rom-coms - of so lowering audience expectations that they no longer have any memory left of what a really, genuinely good and funny comedy actually looks like.

KILLING SEASON: deadly dull

Presumably the intention of casting two heavyweight - and expensive - Hollywood stars in a film is to double the number of bums on seats. It creates an event, attracting not only fans of each of the two stars but also those interested in seeing the two working together - in this case for the first time.
Remember how much extra publicity the pairing of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino generated for 'Heat'?
Well, KILLING SEASON is nothing like 'Heat.' It doesn't even rise to the level of 'Righteous Kill'

which was the disastrous attempt to capitalize on the buzz generated by 'Heat' by reuniting De Niro and Pacino and putting them together in practically every scene. It was just unfortunate that every scene stank.
KILLING SEASON gives us the first on-screen pairing of De Niro and John Travolta but completely fails to capitalize on their presence. The film is a total non-event, and the only thing that'll keep you from nodding off is the grating sound of Travolta's ridiculous attempt at a Serbian accent.
But, in retrospect, I really shouldn't have been surprised.
DeNiro's been turning in cruise and collect performances for years (with the notable exception of last year's 'Silver Linings Playbook') while Travolta's been milking his 'Pulp Fiction' rebirth for even longer (with the notable exception of 'Hairspray').
Rarely have two such big names contributed so little to a film, other than the further tarnishing of their reputation.

WHITE HOUSE DOWN: make that Shite House Down

Merely suspending your disbelief won't cut it. Even suspending, hanging, drawing and quartering it doesn't help.
WHITE HOUSE DOWN is so shouting at the screen in anger bad that no amount of withdrawal from the real world will allow you to experience anything remotely approximating escapist pleasure. Director Roland Emmerich's sole purpose is to blow up as much as possible of one of America's most iconic landmarks while ensuring there's not a hair out of place on the head of cinema's latest Bruce Willis self-effacing action hero wannabe, Tatum Channing.

He plays Capitol Hill cop John Cale who just happens to be on a tour of the White House with his young, politics-crazy daughter, Emily, when a bunch of terrorists masquerading as home theater technicians seize control of the mansion and take the President (Jamie Foxx) hostage.  Having just moments earlier been rejected for a job with the Secret Service because he's unreliable and doesn't follow orders, Cale now finds himself the President's sole hope of survival and the world's only defense against the outbreak of nuclear war.
As a ridiculously well informed news media covers every nail biting moment from ridiculously close to the scene of the action, the big question is - can Cale rise to the occasion or will he screw it up?
What do you think?
For all Emmerich's efforts to create a sense of uncertainty, the end result is never in doubt and the only real question is how much of the White House will be left standing by the time Cale's through proving to Secret Service Special Agent Carol Finnerty (Maggie Gyllenhaal) that she made a big mistake when she turned him down.
Despite being grotesquely outgunned by terrorists who've managed to smuggle a veritable arsenal of weapons into the most closely guarded government building in the world, Cale clearly has a whole gang of angels watching over him. How else to explain the terrorists complete inability to hit him with a single bullet despite firing hundreds at him and their marksmanship in taking out dozens of highly trained police and secret service agents with a single shot?
WHITE HOUSE DOWN is not the first action thriller to pit a lone individual against a gang of well armed, fanatical crack shots but it is the first one I can think of to represent the US government as both benign and totally incompetent at protecting itself from such a small-sized threat. Every single

security system it has in place to protect the President and the White House and the Capitol Building and Air Force One fails, at the same time as the scores of supposedly highly trained Secret Service agents and police demonstrate their total unpreparedness to respond to a surprise attack - which is presumably what all that training was intended to prepare them for.
Seen in this light WHITE HOUSE DOWN is actually a deeply disturbing critique of the current political-military obsession with security and secrecy, dressed up as a celebration of the enduring belief in the power of the individual to make a difference. We should be out in the streets protesting en masse at the continuing surrender of our rights and personal freedoms in the name of protecting our security! And maybe we would be if enough of us had actually gone to see the film but - sadly (or not) - at the time of writing the film has yet to recoup even half of it's estimated $150 million dollar budget at the box office.
I'm not surprised at the failure to capture the public's imagination. Despite the similarities with, and references to, Emmerich's 1996 box office smash 'Independence Day', WHITE HOUSE DOWN doesn't come close to recapturing that magic and, at times, it veers dangerously close to an unamusing parody of that earlier blockbuster. Tatum makes a bland and unmemorable leading man, while Foxx carries too much baggage as an action star to be plausible as an ultra-liberal, cerebral, never-handled-a-gun chief executive who's more than happy to defer to Cale when it comes to defending himself from the bad guys. The producers could not have made a worse choice had they cast Wesley Snipes in the part (his disagreements with the US government over taxation policy aside)!
Contrived, implausible, cliched, predictable and just plain stupid, WHITE HOUSE DOWN features everything I hate about summer blockbusters. Bring on the fall and a return to something close to more intelligent filmmaking.

FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS: the bravery, horror, confusion and deceit of war

When six GIs were photographed raising the American flag over the Japanese island of Iwo Jima on 23 February 1945 they had no idea it would change their lives forever.

FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS is the true story of how that one black and white picture helped win

World War Two. It’s also the story of how it was misrepresented and the soldiers featured in it manipulated to serve a greater cause.

 One of them was Navy corpsman John “Doc” Bradley (Ryan Phillippe). Afterwards he would never talk about his wartime experiences, so following his death his son sets out on a journey across the USA to interview the last survivors of that bloody battle, in an attempt to discover the truth of what happened.

The reality he uncovers reveals how a legend is created, and how that process distorts and rewrites the truth to suit a different purpose. The flag raising photo was one of many taken that February day by a journalist accompanying the troops, but it seized the imagination of a war weary nation. To them it represented victory. The fact that it actually happened just five days into a thirty five day battle for control of the island when the outcome was still far from certain, was immaterial.

The US government was quick to recognise the propaganda value of the picture. After more than three years of fighting the United States was almost broke, and there was a real fear that they would be forced to negotiate a peace treaty with the Japanese because they could no longer afford to pay for guns and bullets.

The photo became the focal point of a new campaign to raise desperately needed funds by persuading the American public to buy more war bonds. The order went out for the soldiers in the picture to be brought home to front the campaign, touring the country and speaking at rallies where their presence as real life heroes would encourage people to open their wallets.

There were just two problems. All the soldiers in the photo had their back to the camera and no one could remember for certain who they all were. Some of them were already dead, killed in the fierce fighting. The other problem was that the photo actually captured a second flag raising. A different group of soldiers had already planted Old Glory on the top of the mountain. This was just a replacement, and on neither occasion was it raised in the heat of battle.

For the US government and military however, the symbolic value was too important to let the facts get in the way, and the three somewhat bewildered surviving soldiers were brought home to do their patriotic duty. Of the three it is Private Ira Hayes, played by Adam Beach, who has the hardest time dealing with the deceit. The film charts his mental disintegration as he turns to alcohol, unable to cope with being labelled “a hero” by the same people who patronisingly call him “chief” and treat him as a second class citizen because he’s American Indian. Today, we would also recognise him as suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.

But it’s wrong to assume FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS is an anti-American film. Director Clint Eastwood’s aim in telling this story is not to denigrate the myth, mock the patriotism or belittle the achievements and sacrifices of the men involved. What he does is return the flag raising event to its proper context, portraying it as an event performed by a group of men who gave it little thought at the

time because their energy was focused on capturing the island. They were true heroes not for planting a flag on top of a mountain, but for the incredible bravery they displayed in taking on an enemy which was prepared to literally fight to the death.

The camera doesn’t flinch in showing us the full bloody horror and confusion of war, and how thousands of young men died fighting for each other. They weren’t thinking of the Stars and Stripes or abstract notions of patriotism and heroism when they charged towards Japanese machine gun nests. They were trying to save their own life and the lives of their buddies. The battlefield sequences are nightmarish scenes of graphic carnage, made disturbingly real by Eastwood’s decision to drain them of colour, giving them the look of genuine World War 2 newsreel footage.

The message to take away from this film is that, despite the official manipulation and dishonesty, the flag raising photo stands as a symbol of the heroism displayed by thousands of GIs on the battlefield, rather than a heroic act in itself, and therefore still has value. But it must also be remembered that these men were real people with families waiting for them back home, and those that survived were haunted by their experience for the rest of their lives.

This is not the easiest film to get into. The first thirty minutes are very disorienting with the story jumping around in time, from the battle on the beaches at Iwo Jima, to the present day, to the war bonds tour across the USA. This lack of a stable storyline creates the same kind of confusion that happens in war. We are not really sure what is going on because we cannot see the full picture. It is in exactly this kind of situation that an event can be taken out of context by people not in full command of the facts and used to promote a message not anticipated by those involved in the original event.

THE DEPARTED: savoring Nicholson at the top of his game

Watching Jack Nicholson ply his craft when he’s firing on all cylinders is one of cinema’s great experiences. It’s something we’ve been deprived of since 2006 and his ‘no-one can top me’ performance as Boston Irish Mafia boss Frank Costello in THE DEPARTED.

Frank’s a man obsessed with uncovering the rat in his organisation, but Jack’s the one chewing at the scenery. Costello is a uniquely Nicholson creation. When he speaks the film’s opening line, “I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me” it can be taken both as Costello wanting to shape the world he lives in, and Nicholson dominating the film he’s acting in.

He draws on his decades of experience and legend building to create a character that – until the Whitey Bulger trial – most of us non-Bostonians believed could only exist in a film. Costello’s evilness is operatic in scale and appearance. It’s a mark of his acting brilliance that he manages to go over-the-top without taking it too far. When he’s on-screen it’s like he’s in Technicolor and everyone else is black and white.

And it’s to the immense credit of director Martin Scorsese that Jack gets the space to be Jack without overwhelming the story to the detriment of the rest of the cast. Costello is the most colourful character but he gives his co-stars plenty of room to do their thing.

This story of lies, betrayal, and sacrifice was a welcome return to form for Scorsese, reminding us of the storytelling skills which earned him the title of “world’s greatest living director” in the 1970s and 80s, and winning him the Oscar for Best Director (the film also picked up Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Editing, and Best Adapted Screenplay). It’s a title I believe he fully deserves, but it’s also been a burden because everything he’s produced in the decades since has been measured against those earlier works. THE DEPARTED is not in the same category as “Taxi Driver”, “Raging Bull” or “Goodfellas” but it comes close. It certainly deserves to rank alongside “Casino.”

Matt Damon is Colin Sullivan, an arrogantly cocky and ambitious Massachusetts State Police officer with seriously divided loyalties. Growing up, his surrogate father was Costello, so when Sullivan gets into the force it’s natural that he keeps Sullivan informed of law enforcement’s attempts to build a case against Boston’s number one criminal.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Billy Costigan, a fellow Massachusetts State Police officer who goes

undercover as a member of Costello’s gang to help build that case. It soon becomes clear to Costello and the police that each has a traitor in their midst, and Costigan and Sullivan are tasked with discovering the identity of the rat.

Damon is icily impressive as the cold, devious and manipulative cop who’s completely unable to feel any genuine human emotions, while DiCaprio’s greatest achievement is to make you forget you’re watching tabloid tv’s favourite pretty boy superstar heart throb, and instead appreciate him as a serious actor totally dedicated to his work.

THE DEPARTED returns to one of Scorsese’s favourite themes – the family. There are repeated references to the importance of knowing where a person comes from and who his people are, when deciding whether or not they are trustworthy. Sullivan stands out in having no discernible family history, and he makes it clear in one scene with his girlfriend that he wants no childhood photos on display in their apartment.

The irony is that for all the talk about the importance of family in judging character, no one has what could be described as an ideal family. The only effectively functioning family are the tribal ones – the Irish, and the police. Senior figures within each fulfill the role of father figure; Costello for the gangsters, and Captain Oliver Queenan (Martin Sheen) for the police.

The three big names aside, there are so many other superb performances to savor in this film. Alec Baldwin, Ray Winstone, and Mark Wahlberg, who bagged himself a best supporting actor Oscar nomination, are all class acts. The one weak link in the project is Madolyn, the police psychiatrist, played by Vera Farmiga. She’s so flaky and unstable that she falls apart at the first hint of conflict or resistance. She’s just not credible as a professional whose job it is to counsel hardened police officers and offenders on probation.

Madolyn is thankfully a minor irritation in what is otherwise a masterful and exciting drama which building to a bloody and shocking climax. Scorsese finally got his hands on the best director Oscar in 2007 after 5 previous nominations not because the Academy felt guilty for having passed him over so many times in the past, but because he richly deserved it.