THE DEPARTED: IS SCORCESE LOST IN TRANSLATION?

This was my blog about this BAFTA 2007 Nominee back in 01 October 2006:

Whenever I hear Hollywood is remaking a Hong Kong movie, my instinct is to go, “Ai-ya! Oh no! They’re going to ruin it!” When that movie is one of my favorite police vs. Triad masterpieces of all time, ‘Infernal Affairs’, I start getting really worried. For those who don’t know, the film stars Hong Kong’s acting elite and is about moles, double-crosses and mobile telephony. It broke box office records in Asia Pac.

I remember watching it in a cinema in London and being the only person who reacted in all the right places (laughed, gasped, got scared etc.). Although the subtitles appeared, the gweilo audience (Westerners) missed all the nuances and colloquialisms which I understood — Cantonese is my mother tongue — so their reactions to the film were affected.

How movies are remade from HK / China to a Western audience always interests me because of potential “lost in translation” issues.

Surprisingly, Scorcese has conjured up a strong piece that stands up in its own rights. The film’s called The Departed and its cast is incredible: Leonardo di Caprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg and Ray Winstone. di Caprio gives arguably his best performance since ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape’ (disclosure — I HATED ‘Titanic’. Soppy sentimental nonsense with a tiresome song). Nicholson is even more menacing in ‘The Departed’ than when he starred in ‘The Shining’.

The biggest surprise of all is a certain producer by the name of………Brad Pitt!

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Link: The Departed, Apple movie trailer