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Old 10-15-2006, 11:59 AM   #1681
Spiwak
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Originally Posted by Once A Villain View Post
Makes perfect sense and a nice little fairy tale, but it's still not very believable that the same woman falls for both men, who just happen to be moles (one for the cops, one for the criminals) hunting for each other, in a city with as many men as Boston to choose from.
If movies could only be interpreted by how well they reflect reality or believability, then what would be the point? It is completely unrealistic, in fact the whole movie is unrealistic, but it isn't really trying to be realistic in the first place, in that way at least. I mean, notice how there's not one "real" person in the movie, all of Boston is either part of the underworld or part of the law enforcement; it never tries to be a slice-of-life. It's still an interesting story/premise.

Quote:
Sorry... For me it's precisely the children's movies and action movies where the bad guys are required to "learn their lesson". In movies about real life, bad men don't always see the error of their ways or get punished for it. Nor do they always go on leading a "hollow life" if those other things don't happen. Now, that worked brilliantly in The Godfather Part II where it ended on Michael sitting on the bench, an empty shell of a man who had just ordered the death of his own brother. But while it works in that story, it doesn't work in every story. It doesn't make a villain an incomplete character simply because he outwits everyone else, gets away with it, and possibly doesn't even feel any regret.
In typical action movies, whatever, they die and what-not but what I mean is that they are essentially one-dimensional characters. They do not ever consider their actions and think entirely in terms of power and greed, which I refuse to believe is how real people act. They die, but die without really regretting their horrible actions. Now I haven't seen Infernal Affairs, but what you seemed to say is that the Damon character in it gets away with it and learns nothing from it (you'll have to correct me if that's not the case). In The Departed Damon isn't really like that; he starts acting more out of survival than anything else, trying to keep his life from spinning out of his control, and not out of truly evil/manipulative intentions. If he were perfectly evil I would have expected him to kill the girl because she knew what he was doing, but he doesn't; he might actually love her. Also, I remember that moment when he asks DiCaprio to just kill him in the elevator, which I believe is because he was becoming exhausted from all the lying and guilt. If he were to succeed by the end I would expect him to at least feel like shit for it instead of simply getting away with it and that's that. Killing him at the very end might not have been necessary, but I believe it fit the structure of the rest of the movie, considering how DiCaprio died.

Damon isn't really the "villain," anyway. He's one of the protagonists, both sharing a rather Greek tragic storyline. Costello is the villain if anything, and he doesn't really do much developing throughout, so there you go.
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