Thursday, November 09, 2006

Shanghaied at the Odeon



A rainy day and an unavoidable family outing turned into every cinemaphile’s nightmare: an enforced trip to a mainstream multiplex. Saw the best thing on there – The Departed. Marty Scorcsese’s rip off riff on the HK neo-noir classic Infernal Affairs. At least I did not have to watch The Devil Wears Prada, which would have made me eat my own hands before driving drunk with nothing but stumps in a stolen van towards LA on a mission to bugger Anne Hathaway.

It was awful, especially knowing that this is as good as it gets in the plastic zone. Hit with clichés like hail, I had to stop myself guffawing. Jack Nicholson has clearly been dead since 1989. DiCaprio and Damon could barely carry a 30 second biscuit advert. Marky Mark still has three nipples.

What was sad is it was like eating a meal from a once great chef who has been restricted to the same rather small fridge for thirty years. The results are competent but wearily familiar and emphasise persistent flaws more than they recall past glories. Broad-brush Catholic ethnic hood stereotypes. The wonderful word: “fuck”. Cruxifiction metaphors. A self consciously ok record collection.

Hey, at least I did not have to sit through the costume turdbomb he did last, but the man behind a few of my all time favourites should be doing better than this. Damn.