Reviewed by Robert Metcalf (2nd take)

THE BLURRY line between cops and criminals is repeatedly crossed in The Departed, as Martin Scorsese explores the tangled web of Boston’s Irish-American criminal subculture. Jack Nicholson plays Frank Costello, a Boston crime kingpin. At the beginning of the film, Costello observes that, in his world, you can either be a cop or a criminal, but there is little difference when there’s a gun pointed at your head. And of course, throughout the film, both cops and criminals frequently have guns pointed at their heads which, in many cases, go off. It is a film governed by the realpolitik of the streets, or at least the streets as we’ve come to know them through Scorsese.

Reviewed by Catherine Bisley (2nd take)

KEN LOACH’s latest film, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, is a sharp polemic that follows the story of a young Irish doctor, Damien (Cillian Murphy), who joins the IRA to fight along side his brother, Teddy (Padriac Delaney), during the Irish War of Independence. Not for the faint hearted, the film depicts the unrelenting and unprovoked violence of the Black and Tans: a boy is beaten to death when he refuses to state his name in English; a toadlike officer beats an old train conductor, his white fleshy face trembling with hatred. The IRA’s use of violence is equally troubling: “I feel nothing” says Damian after shooting a young informer who he grew up with.

Reviewed by Tim Wong

STUDIOS take note: if you need a movie remade, hope like hell that Martin Scorsese comes knocking at your door. Now that retreads – particularly those of breakout foreign hits – are so absurdly commonplace, what’s revitalizing about The Departed is that it owes virtually no debt to its Hong Kong predecessor Infernal Affairs. It’s a robust, standalone beast that rightfully discards the hairspray, gun-cocked posturing, and Canto-pop gleam of Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s original triad fiesta, settling for the blue-collar starch of the Irish in working class Boston, MA. And what it lacks in the taut, conceptual realisation of the original’s undercover conceit it makes up for in its sizeable mean streak. We live in an angry place Scorsese maintains, full of seething masculine violence to the screaming furies of the Dropkick Murphys. In militant times goaded by the Bush Doctrine and his invasive Patriot Act (which this film indulges with glee), it’s little surprise that the nostrum spoken here is one of a bullet to the head.

Reviewed by Jacob Powell

MEET KENNY. He’s a plumber, but with a difference – he specialises in corporate waste management. Or, in layman’s terms, dealing with other people’s shit. The problem for Kenny is that it isn’t just literal shit he has to deal with. There is also the emotional, social, and relational shit that he has to put up with too. Great stinking mounds of it!