"The Departed" ***1/2 (out of four): After a decade-long lull, Martin Scorsese returns to form with a taut remake about two cops working on either side of the law to bring down a notorious kingpin, played with age-defying glee by Jack Nicholson.
It must be hard to be Martin Scorsese. When you’ve made the top ten lists for the 70s (“Taxi Driver”), 80s (“Raging Bull”) and 90s (“Goodfellas”), as well as countless other contributions to the cultural zeitgeist, what do you do next? Well, if you’re Martin Scorsese you dabble a bit in period pieces (“Gangs of New York”) and biopics (“The Aviator”) and spend some time breaking in a new muse (Leonardo DiCaprio), often with mixed results. At last, after a decade-long lull, all those pieces fall into glorious place in “The Departed”, Mr. Scorsese’s remake of the 2002 Chinese [Thanks for the correction!] cop drama which is probably the director’s most taut piece of storytelling since “Goodfellas”.
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"2002 Japanese cop drama"
it's actually a Chinese cop thriller. it also has two surprisingly good sequels (especially the third which becomes an almost psychological thriller)