My feelings on The Departed are mixed. I agree that it's certainly no Raging Bull, Goodfellas, or even Casino. Part of what upsets me are the changes made from the original film. None of them were for the better.
Spoiler:1. The love triangle was weak. It stretched believablility to the breaking point, for me. They set it up as well as they could, really. Still, it's something that should have been ruled out after the very first screenplay draft.
2. The Damon character in the original film was changed by his experiences. He began to feel the guilt and see the error in his ways. There was more in the original film about how both of these guys change, for better or worse. In The Departed, Damon is just a black and white "bad guy" all the way through.
3. The Damon character in the original gets away with it. He doesn't get his head blown off by Mark Wahlberg, heh. Scorsese really went for the Hollywood ending there. In a sense it's nice to see the bad guy get it in the end, but it's also far more predictable. Sometimes the bad guys don't get caught, and I like the original ending more.
4. As much as I love Jack Nicholson, he was just too much in this film. Over-the-top for sure. This role was smaller in the original film, and it didn't suffer at all for it.
