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Film · Warner Bros. · 2006

Pass it on

The Departed

46Watch it awake.

A serious film about a life that becomes a cover. Adults. The last page is too pleased.

The review

A son of South Boston is sent to become someone else, and a son of the same streets is sent the other way. The film understands that a cover is not a costume you remove at dinner. It gets into the walk. That is worth an adult's evening: the fright of no longer knowing which office you belong to.

Then the bodies arrive as punctuation, and the punctuation is proud. You can watch the first two hours as a moral picture and still refuse the feeling that the last five minutes are a cleverness. Not for anyone who wants a gangster to quote.

Journal

Keep The Departed in the record.

No house has filed a sentence for this yet.

Live Historic number 46. Yours can differ.

The glance

Household and Piety and Temperance and Stewardship are the thin ones.

Is a marriage, a parent, or a child a real life here, or just a prop?

This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.

Consider this

The Dark Knight

60 instead of 46

The Dark Knight is still a crime film, and it scores 60 instead of 46. What you gain is piety: Joker pushes a creed of nothing; the answer is a ferry that will not press the button.

The eight

6
Industry
Police work and criminal work are both shown as labor, files, and waiting.
3
Household
Fathers here are bosses. A romance cannot find a true room.
2
Piety
The church is a funeral and a memory. No one is under orders from it.
6
Courage
Each mole stays in a life that can end him any evening.
6
Republic
A city, a department, a crew. Loyalty is the public moral, and it is rotten.
3
Temperance
The language is foul because the rooms are. The shootings start to enjoy themselves.
8
Truth
The film's subject is the cost of a false life, and it does not blink early.
3
Stewardship
What either man might have left is a name that was real. Neither leaves it.

Where to watch

Finding the page.

Live Historic · The Departed · 46IMDb tt0407887

Live HistoricSee what matters.

Film · United Artists · 1964

Pass it on

A Hard Day's Night

46Watch it awake.

Watch it awake, or put it on for the songs and the work. Nobody is asked to become worse.

The review

They have a television appearance to make, a train to catch, and an afternoon in which the city wants pieces of them. The jokes are at the expense of managers, advertisers, and anyone who needs the boys to stand still and be a product. The songs are the work, performed as work. Nobody is asked to betray a friend. Nobody is asked to be cruel to a girl. For a phenomenon as large as this one, that is a remarkable restraint, and I will credit it.

A family can put it on. The limit is that it is a day, not a life, and a day of fame is a thin diet if it becomes the only picture of adulthood in the house. Watch the studio session and ask who in the room was doing a job seriously. Include them. The screaming outside is the decade. The work inside is the part worth keeping. A very large cultural fact of 1964. The fact is not a reason. The songs and the decency are.