Whose Faulty Vision

The Departed’s Ending

(SPOILERS for “The Departed”)

So The Departed won a bunch of Oscars last night, including Best Adapted Screenplay. I have to say, I really wasn’t as impressed by The Departed as everyone else was. There were some great performances, but the screenplay bothered me. I thought that the story was muddled, with no clear arc. A bunch of stuff happened, but it didn’t really feel cohesive. This was exemplified by the ending.

There was a wonderful piece of humor writing, published in National Lampoon or some such, called “How to Write Good”. The essay had a number of tips on writing, including how to end your novel. If you’re writing a novel, and you can’t think of how to end it, just write, “Suddenly, everybody got run over by a truck. The End.” (If your novel is about trucks, you have to modify it to “Suddenly, everybody got run over by a monster truck. The End.”)

And that’s what “The Departed” felt like to me: “Suddenly, everybody got shot. The End.” There wasn’t any actual resolution of anything, just everybody dying.

I’m told that the original movie, “Infernal Affairs”, had a different ending. Maybe it had a more cohesive story in general–I should check it out.