Scorsese's gangland epics have become a genre in their own right to such an extent that the motifs of honour among thieves, snitches, insecure hierarchies and bloody cycles of retribution (all lubricated with lashings of faux-macho 'fucks', of course) can be processed swiftly this time round, without need for recourse to exposition. This is refreshing in a work of this length, and further streamlines what is already a tautly wired structure.
This remake of Andrew Lau's 2002 Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs plays it safe with the casting by banging immovable objects against unstoppable forces as monuments of Hollywood like Nicholson and Sheen Sr. deliver their standard packages at each other at close range. Nicholson's cartoonised gangster is in fact uncomfortably close to his riveting Joker, and at times threatens to drown the centre of the film, which is the chase to uncover each other by the far blander next generation leading men Di Caprio and Damon, moles on opposite sides in, respectively, Nicholson's band of merry psychos and the State Police. One can't help wondering whether the casting of the two, physically such monotypes, is intended to highlight their quite diametrically opposed motivations, and if so, whether this heightens the contrast or just ends up muddying the issues.
There is no moral here, besides the stock 'blood will have blood', and no real exploration of deeper issues of identity and alignment - the chalk-and-cheese backgrounds of the two main characters serve only as a frame on which to hang a plot of breakneck twists and turns. It at least amply delivers on tension, and thereby picked up 2006's Best Picture Oscar by default.
6/10
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